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ScHEYICHBI AND THE StRAiND, 



EARLY DAYS ALONG THE DELAWARE. 



WITH 



AN ACCOUNT OF RECENT EVENTS AT SEA GROVE. 



CX)NTAINING 

SKETCHES OF THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF THE PIONEER COLONISTS; THE WON 
UERFUL ORIGIN OF AMERICAN SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION; THE REMARKABLE 
COURSE OF POLITICAL PROGRESS AND MATERIAL IMPROVEMENT IN THE 
UNITED STATES, AS SHOWN IN THE HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY, WITH 
PROOF OF THE SAFETY AND BENEFIT OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITU- 
TIONS, AND THE NECESSITY OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 



TO WHICH IS APPENDED A GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE 
SHORE OF NEW JERSEY. 



BY 



EDWARD S. WHEELER. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH TWELVE FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS, FROM ORIGINAL 
DRAWINGS BY D. B. GULICK, CHARLES W. KNAPP, AND OTHERS. 



PRESS OF J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

PHILADELPHIA: 
1876. 






Copyright, 1876, by Edward S. Wheeler. 



■\ 



V ^ 



^ - 



DEDICATION. 



TO MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS. 

who, firm in the faith themselves, can nevertheless respect the convictions of 
others ; to earnest Christians whose spiritual trust and faith is so perfect, 
they have no fear any fact can disprove truth, or human error annul 
the divine law ; to Christians whose character honors their creed, 
whose fairness and honesty command regard, while their 
kindness and courtesy inspire fraternal love; to all 
who love truth better than their own conceit ; to all 
who reverence God more than any tlieory ; to all 
who seek the good, the true, and beautiful 
themselves, and devoutly labor for the 
welfare and eternal happiness of hu- 
manity, I dedicate this volume. 



PREFACE. 



Every work should be justified by its usefulness and recommended 
by the manner of its performance. 

Criticism of literary style is averted from this little book, since nice 
elaboration of details, and smooth, consistent unity of parts, with a 
high degree of literary finish, are impossible in a volume made diverse 
by the requirements of its purpose and desultory by needful brevity. 
I have been disinterested in that of which I have written, and left 
entirely free to follow my own taste and judgment in regard to matter 
and manner, being bound in agreement with those concerned only that 
I should serve their purpose by " truthful representations" alone. 

Thus directed and encouraged in pursuing the course congenial to 
my feelings and conscience, I have tried to present only the facts of 
science and the truth of history, knowing them to be stranger than 
fiction, and in simple statement more wonderful and interesting than 
the most remarkable works of imagination. 

Although an observer of the things I have described so far as they 
exist in the present, it woul.d be absurd to put forward any claim to 
original discovery. I have gathered from many sources, but think a 
display of authorities would be out of place ; yet, it is true, I have been 
more inquisitive than the result may indicate. Errors are possible, 
even when care is taken to be accurate, and mistakes are not at all 
inconsistent with an honest purpose; still, if misrepresentations exist 
in this work they are unknown, and as the motive has been consci- 
entious, and the effort earnest, I believe the consideration due reliability 
is deserved by all herein published. 

But whatever discrepancies may mar the printed pages, there is no 
occasion to criticise the illustrations for misrepresentation. They are 
mostly drawn from photographic views, taken on the spot, with micro- 
scopic fidelity, by artistic operators, and have been faithfully repro- 
duced by the draughtsman and engraver. They may, therefore, be 
looked upon as giving a correct idea of the physical features of the 



vi PREFACE. 

beautiful locality in which they were taken, and the varied structures 
which utih"ze and decorate the neighborhood. 

Whoever has loitered along the shore of the summer sea, seeking 
rest and recreation therefrom, has, when feeling his soul stirred by the 
grandeur and loveliness of the scene, longed for some magic art which 
could fix forever the transient glories of evanescent beauty in his mind, 
making his memory thus the picture-gallery of nature. 

This may not be, but somewhat has been done to recall the features 
of the seascape where, in the bygone summer, so many earnest. Chris- 
tian souls " took sweet counsel together," amid the healing breezes and 
peaceful surroundings of the consecrated Sea Grove. 

Neither the artist's pencil nor the photographer's skill can reproduce 
all that presented itself before the delighted vision. No art can imitate 
the tenderness of the dawn across the sea, or do justice to the resplen- 
dence with which the sun sank among the western waves on quiet 
Sabbath evenings ; but all this maybe suggested to the sense, and with 
many memory will fill the picture with colors true to nature, and even 
recall the friends who shared their summer vacation. 

Again, as they look upon the pictures of our unpretending book, 
they will hear in memory the voice of exhortation and the music ol 
praise, mingling with the undertone of the unceasing surges. Again 
they will enter the broad pavilion, and, pausing but to offer a word of 
prayer for all who share not in their religious blessings, bow the soul 
in devotion to partake of the union communion service with their 
numerous friends of many churches. 

To awaken such reminiscences in those who know Sea Grove and 
its associations by residence there, and to increase their interest and 
pleasure in the place by bringing before them many facts pertaining to 
their favorite resort, is the purpose of this book ; besides, it is requisite 
that all who need the sea-side privileges of rest and cheerful recreation 
should be informed where they can secure them at their convenience, 
reasonably, without annoying contact with demoralizing dissipations, 
as distasteful to the thoughtful as they are wearisome and hurtful to 
the invalid, and physically and spiritually unprofitable to all. 

Trusting that these ends may be fully served to the common benefit, 
and that something of instruction and refined gratification may be 
incidental thereto, the author with pleasure presents his work to an en- 
lightened public. 



ERRATA AND CORRIGENDA. 

n page 5, 26th line, for "its citizens discovered" read: their citizens 

)vered. 

.1 page 8, 32d line, for "the discoveries" read: the discoverers. 

n page 16, 28th line, for " Peterzen" read : Pieterzen. 

1 page 19, 4th line, for "catalogue" read: catalogues. 

1 page 55, 30th line, for "home and asylum of those who had deprived 

of liberty and life" read : asylum of those who had deprived his people 

berty and life. 

1 page 63, 42d line, for " 1852" read : 1822. 

1 page 107, nth line, for "seventeen" read: seven. 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



History evinces the exceeding potency of religious ideas, as a cause 
of material progress; as the phenomena of Nature manifest the power 
of the Infinite Spirit. 

Curiosity, avarice, and ambition induce exploration and discovery; 
stimulate enterprise ; found and foster states ; but fanaticism, faith, and 
spiritual convictions are the world's pioneers ; these move more pro- 
foundly the passions of mankind, quicken higher and intenser energies, 
and develop more sublime results. 

Fanaticism, the fungi of religious growth, provokes the bigot to 
draw the sword of exterminating conquest, changing the character and 
boundaries of nations ; the mad zealot lights the fires of persecution, 
expatriating the flower of a country's population, who carry religion 
and the arts into their place of banishment. Devotion inspires the 
propaganda, and missionaries penetrate the antipodean wilderness, 
domicile among barbarians, and plant civilization to flourish above 
their martyr graves. Faith feeds the courage of the believer, and 
impels to self-consecration ; fired by religious enthusiasm, bound by 
stern conviction, and led by the "inwaid light," the dissenting Hugue- 
not, the Covenanter, the Puritan, and the Quaker dare the ocean, the 
desert, and the savage, in search of a home of righteousness, for free- 
dom and for peace. Hope stimulates them, a religious purpose sus- 
tains them ; they confront every peril, endure every trial, survive all 
suffering, outlive every hinderance, and triumph at last over every 
difficulty in the adorable name of God! 

§ Prophesied in the rhapsodies and inspirations of the seers of all 
ages; mysteriously reported in the literature of Asia in the early dawn 
of the Christian era; celebrated obscurely in the historic runes of the 
heroic Scandinavian sea-kings a thousand years ago, and claimed by 
Icelandic and Danish historians as the familiar haunt of their fore- 
fathers for many centuries, — the Western Hemisphere long nourished 
on its soil nations who imitated the architecture of Egypt, perpetuated 
the religious rites of Tyre, and may have shared in the commerce of 
the Orient. On the shores of the Western World, it has been claimed, 
was mined the gold of Ophir for the temple of Solomon ; while the 

3 



4 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

broad plains of its continents received, it is said, the lost and wandering 
ten tribes of Israel. 

Reflecting dubiously the life of unknown ages, from the sculptured 
sides and hieroglyphic ornaments of its antique and symbolic monu- 
ments, America inspires the imagination, but compels the mind to drift 
unsatisfied over its vast and significant ruins, back into the twilight of 
tradition and the night of pre-historic oblivion. The plains of America 
are marked by the work of a race without a record; its great valleys 
covered with traces of a numerous and active population-, and yet they 
have no chronicle. The American forests tower above the ruins of 
large cities whose civilization is evident from their architecture, — still 
the hosts of citizens have passed away: their origin, their history, and 
their fate conjecture alone can intimate. 

But, if the past of America is perplexing to the antiquarian, dubious 
in historic twilight, or hid in the darkness of time and barbarism, its 
modern life is clearly defined and of thrilling interest. Here are no 
monuments of an enduring civilization, linking the present, generation 
by generation, to the remote past ; no vast collections of splendid 
volumes, the record of a people's ancient glory; no empire, one in 
faith and one in government for a thousand years, — all is new, primi- 
tive, incomplete; but there are young states in America proud as Rome, 
more free than Athens; there are a hundred great, luxurious, and 
growing cities ; there are public works that open up the long sought 
passage to India, and millions of happy homes, of the best provided, 
most intelligent, free, and independent people. 

It is less than four centuries since the voyages of Columbus; the 
history is brief, but the advance has been rapid, the development 
immense. Each American generation has done the work of a hundred 
years, and each century has become an era in civilization, an epoch in 
history. To compile and elaborate the record of such an advance, and 
educe the principles of progress from the facts of social and political 
evolution, is the congenial and proper work of philosophic scholars, 
and acute and comprehensive minds have employed themselves therein 
with usefulness and honor. 

It is not the purpose of the writer to ape the great historiographers, 
but he may modestly hope to add a reliable note to the materials of 
history, suggest some practical inference, or inspire an appropriate 
reflection, just as the wandering but observant Indian, though unskilled 
to build the monument of a nation, still faithfully places a votive pebble 
upon the growing mound which tells of the greatness of his tribe. 

However little the present publication may add to the vast sum of 
historic knowledge, it at least indicates the causes which have fostered 
American liberty, and manifests the nature and temper of a free 
people as the energetic cause of moral improvements and unexampled 
material progress; this appears in the history herein given of the 



THE RED /SCO VER V OF AMERICA. . 5 

settlement of the valley of the Delaware, especially in New Jersey, and 
conclusively in the interesting and detailed account of the develop- 
ments of Sea Grove, — that beautiful and prosperous town having been 
instituted entirely in keeping with the spirit of the representative men 
composing the Association which bears its name. 

§ The discovery of America was prehistoric; its unrecorded monu- 
ments, ruins, and sculptured rocks were antiquated when, in 1492, 
Columbus voyaged to the West Indies, and various nations and races 
had already left the traces of their visits and occupancy at a number 
of widely separated localities upon the two Western Continents. The 
modern histor)^ of America begins with the voyages of the inspired 
navigator of Genoa. The rediscovery of the Western Hemisphere 
commanded the attention of the civilized world; aroused the emula- 
tion of nations, and the ambition of kings ; it inflamed the spirit of 
the adventurous and enterprising; kindled the imagination of the 
enthusiastic ; awakened the hopes of the people ; encouraged the 
aspirations of liberal statesmen, and actualized the dreams of the 
philanthropist. 

India was the prize Europe coveted four hundred years ago. Colum- 
bus sailed for Cathay, and supposed he landed on its eastern shore, — 
"the beginning and the end of India." His voyages for a short route 
to India discovered America; the search for a northwest passage 
explored the shores of the " New World." 

In the time of Columbus it was the uncertain international law of 
Christendom, that Christian nations became entitled to any land or 
country its citizens discovered, took possession of and occupied, unless 
it was already the territory of other Christians. This presumptuous 
claim of the exclusive right of a sect, as sucli, to the secular owner- 
ship of the whole world, was a political device, and, though endorsed 
by popes and approved by bishops, was at once absurd, impudent, and 
irreligious; but the heresy had a natural origin, and, becoming a dogma 
and an apology, developed an awful historic sequence. 

Numerous as the voyages of discovery to America were, and impor- 
tant as trade became, for more than a hundred and fifty years after 
Columbus, gross ignorance of the Western Hemisphere characterized 
the action of even the courts and kings of Europe. Under the name 
of the " West Indies," two vast and rich continents were long regarded 
as but troublesome islands in the way of voyages to India, and frequent 
and conflicting royal grants afterwards assumed to convey, in an impos- 
sible manner, possession of the territories of America from ocean to 
ocean, the grantors having the untroubled conceit that the average 
width of the continent was no more than about three hundred miles. 

Under the pretext supplied by the voj-ages of Columbus, Alexander 
VI., " the worst of the popes," assuming to be the temporal as well as 
spiritual head of Christendom, pretended to invest Spain with regal 



6 . SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

possession in perpetuity of all heathen lands found, or to be discovered, 
to the west of a meridian three hundred and seventy leagues westward 
of the Azores. In insolent and fanatical assertion of her declared 
rights, which, thus derived, became a matter of religious faith, Spain 
undertook to monopolize the trade of the West Indies and control 
the navigation of the high seas. Hence, Portugal colonized and 
traded only in part of Brazil, her minute allotment of all the vast 
"Indies;" and so, in defense of the faith enshrined in her Papal mon- 
opoly, the fleets of Spain pirated all vessels they overhauled sailing the 
Atlantic to her pretended exclusive possessions. At the same time 
Spanish kings made war upon Protestant maritime nations in a way 
that left enterprising Holland no chance for existence but in her defeat, 
and compelled England to sail to commercial and naval supremacy 
over the sunken hulks of the " Invincible Armada." 

§ Although Balthazar Mouchcron, of Holland, and his associates, 
patrons of discovery, moved by the terrible sufferings and failures of 
their explorers, about the year 1600 abandoned as hopeless the quest 
for a northern route to India, the immense importance of such a pas- 
sage was obvious, and the Danes and English continued the resolute 
search. The directors of the prosperous and powerful Dutch East 
India Company, then in full operation, shared the notions of their 
cotemporaries, and, overruling the experienced Moucheron and his 
Zeeiand partisans, the Amsterdam members of the Directory, jealous 
of Denmark and England, decided the Company to seek for itself a 
safer and more convenient way to their remote places of traffic. The 
stockholders of the East India Company had received in one year a 
dividend of seventy-five per cent, on their investment; they could well 
afford a venture which promised even greater facilities to their business. 
By orders from the Directory at Amsterdam, a very fast sailing vessel 
named " De Halve Maan," or Half Moon, of forty lasts or eighty tons, 
a " vlie-boat," having two masts, such as were constructed especially 
for difficult navigation in sounds and rivers, was fitted for an arctic 
voyage. For a schipper, or commander, Henry Hudson, an P^nglish- 
man, who had already made two such adventures, was engaged. The 
under schipper, or mate, was a Dutchman, and the vlie-boat was 
manned by twenty men, P^nglish and Dutch. Robert Juet sailed with 
Hudson as his clerk, and became the historian of the voyage. The 
De Halve Maan was ordered to look for a passage by the northeast or 
northwest to China, the Directors trusting Hudson to find some way 
past Nova Zembla. or some strait or channel between the islands of the 
West Indies, by which their fleets of Dutch East Indiamen, fearless of 
Spanish interference, could bear directly to India and all the Orient the 
products of Europe in profitable exchange for the pearls of the Asiatic 
Archipelago, the diamonds of Golconda, the lawns of the Deccan, and 
the spices of Cathay. 



VOYAGE OF THE VLIE-BOAT. 7 

Accompanied by his only son, Hudson, hailing from Amsterdam, set 
sail the 4th of April, 1609, for the northeast of Norway. He left the 
Texel on the 6th of April, and doubled the cape of Norway on the 5th 
of May. Finding his way toward Nova Zembla obstructed by vast ice- 
bergs, and his ship crowded out of her course by great fields of moving 
ice, Hudson ran the Half Moon to the west and south. Passing 
through a great fleet of French fishermen off Newfoundland, and 
touching at several points on the coast of New England, he arrived off 
the Chesapeake in the middle of August. Hudson's old friend, Captain 
John Smith, had given him a map of Virginia, on which, somewhere to 
the north of the Chesapeake, a strait was laid down, by which Smith 
was confident the Pacific Ocean could be reached. Knowing himself 
to be in the neighborhood of the settlement of his countrymen and 
friends at Jamestown, Hudson put his ship about, August i8th, and 
kept along the coast to the north again. The Half Moon entered 
Delaware Bay August 28th, which Hudson slightly explored and 
sounded, making observations of its shores, but without landing. 
Finding he could not sail his vlie-boat from Sea Grove to San P^ran- 
cisco, and hence that the Delaware was not the passage to Cathay, 
Hudson coasted to the north along the Jersey shore, and on the 3d of 
September anchored inside of Sandheuken, or Sandy Hook, where he 
remained a week, and was frequently visited by the Indians. From 
this anchorage the Half Moon sailed into the bay of New York, still 
being visited by the Indians, whom Hudson and his crew taught, as 
their first lesson in civilization, — how to get drunk. 

Hudson examined the Hudson River for twenty-two days, his boats 
going up twenty-five or thirty miles above Albany, and then, having 
made sure that neither Hell Gate nor the Hudson were a water-way to 
Hindustan, he, on the 4th of October, put out to sea, and, in conse- 
quence of the dissensions of his crew, finally decided to set sail for 
Holland. 

The Half Moon with her motley and mutinous company, of whom 
Hudson became afraid, put into Dartmouth, in England, where, the 
Dutch assert, she was detained and Hudson kept through the jealousy 
of James I. Hudson, however, sent a brilliant report of his voyage to 
his employers in Holland, in which he speaks of the country he 
visited as "most beautiful," " hct scoonste land dat men met voeten 
betreden kon," etc. Whoever has voyaged up the " Great River of the 
Mountains," above New York, by the Catskills, or yachted in August 
off Sea Grove and up Delaware Bay, where the vlie-boat De Halve 
Maan cruised in that month long ago, will certainly agree with him. 

During his fourth voyage of discovery, made from P^ngland in 1610, 
Hudson with his only son and eight men, four of them being sick, was 
driven by mutineers from his ship, the Discovery, into an unprovisioned 
boat and cast loose among the ice, mid-seas in Hudson's Bay. There 



8 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

the brave and persistent navigator must have cruelly and miserably 
perished. 

Could he but voyage once more out of the cold and ice-bound Arctic 
seas, how overwhelming would be his astonishment ! At the extreme 
point of Cape May he saw, with admiration, long ago, the green woods 
crowd down to the sandy strand, and from the primeval forest the 
wondering Kechemeches stare out, thinking his ship the canoe of their 
Manitou. There he would now look in amazement upon the broad 
avenues and handsome cottages of Sea Grove ; he would see hotels and 
pavilions in the place of savage wigwams, and hear the Sabbath bell, 
the organ, and the Christian hymn, instead of "the gaunt wolf's long- 
drawn howl" along the shore, or the war-whoop of the exultant savage. 

" The bay of the south river was the first place of which the men of 
the Half Moon took possession, before any Christian had been there," 
says Vander Donk, the historian ; and the claim of the Dutch to the 
adjoining territories by right of discovery was based upon the assumed 
accuracy of the statement. Hudson may have been the first to form- 
ally take possession of the Zuydt Baai, as the Hollanders called the 
bay of Delaware, but Cabot, Cortereal, Verazzani, Captain John Smith, 
and others, iiad at various times carefully observed the shores and 
harbors of "Virginia," and cruised along the coast to the north; 
besides, it is historical that very early, scores of years before the voy- 
ages of Hudson, "there was hardly a convenient harbor on the whole 
Atlantic frontier of the United States which was not entered by 
slavers." It seems that Hudson, following, perhaps unconsciously, in 
the wake of others, merely took possession of the unrecorded dis- 
coveries of some unknown navigator. 

§ In answer to the petitions of a number of merchants, a general 
edict was issued by the States General of Holland, March 27th, 1614, 
for the encouragement of discovery and the protection of aboriginal 
trade. It was enacted by the High and Mighty States General that 
the discoveries of "any new courses, havens, countries, or places" 
should have "the exclusive privilege of resorting to and frequenting 
the same for four voyages," and all intruders were to be punished by 
confiscation and fines. A number of merchants, chiefly of Amster- 
dam, thereupon formed a partnership to make discoveries and carry 
on trade to new countries, and five vessels were fitted out to follow in 
the track of Hudson to Manhattan. One of these, named the Fortune, 
was from Hoorn, a port in North Holland, and commande-d by Corne- 
lis Jacob.sen Mey ; another ship, also called the Fortune, was in 
charge of Commander Hcndrick Christiaensen ; a third, named the 
Tiger, was sailed by Captain Adriaen Block. Arriving at the mouth 
of the Hudson, Block's vessel was accidentally destroyed by fire. To 
retrieve this misfortune, he erected a few huts at Castle Garden, and 
began to construct a yacht of about sixteen tons burthen, of the fine 



THE FIRST VESSEL BUILT AT NEW YORK. g 

timber he found there, the Indians kindly feeding him and his men, all 
the winter of 1613. May, in the mean time, cruised to the eastward, 
coasted along the southern shore of Long Island, and continued his 
trip to Martha's Vineyard, then called " Capacke" by the natives. 
Upon the completion of his new craft, the Onrust, or Restless, Block 
sailed through the East River and Hell Gate, where he led the way as 
a pilot, and through Long Island Sound, observing the coasts, harbors, 
islands, rivers, and waters, as far as Cape Cod, the promontory to 
which Hudson, in the summer of 1609, had given the name of " New 
Holland." Block ascertained that Long Island was sea-girt, and visited 
many other remarkable places along the New England coast. The 
records of the voyages of the consort ships, the Fortune, the Little 
Fox, and Nightingale, in 161 3 and 1614, are imperfect and unreliable. 

The name of Block Island perpetuates the memory of its persistent 
and intrepid discoverer, the first man to run a keel through Hell Gate, 
and the first " Long Island Sound Pilot." The shores which Block 
surveyed, and which Holland first colonized, have been for two cen- 
turies or more, as now, "the land of steady habits," the home of in- 
dustry, prosperity, intelligence, and freedom, — a " New Holland," 
indeed, a " New England" as well. They are glorious by day with 
many a fair town and city, and sparkle at night with scores of shining 
beacons, while over the seas the Dutchman slowly navigated speeds 
in ceaseless succession a numerous fleet of" floating palaces," the best, 
the safest, and most magnificent steamboats in the world. 

The " Restless," built at Manhattan, in 1614, was thirty-eight feet in 
the keel, forty-four and one-half feet from stem to stern, and eleven 
and one-half feet wide. She was remarkable as the first vessel built in 
the harbor of New York, but was not, as has been written, " the first 
decked vessel built in the old United States," the " Virginia," of " Saga- 
dahoc," of thirty tons, a "pretty pinnace," having been built by "one 
Digby, of London," at St. George's, — Sir George Popham's settlement, 
— at the mouth of the Penobscot River, in the winter of 1607. Still, the 
Restless was a notable craft, for she sailed in the van of a countless 
fleet, which for two hundred and fifty years has stood out from the 
northern coast of the United States to astonish the navigators of Eu- 
rope by the excellence of American ships, and furnish models for the 
improvement of the naval architecture of the world. Of all the many 
fine ships which have done honor to American shipwrights, a credita- 
ble share have been launched in the waters of the Delaware. Since 
'the " iron age" of shipbuilding, the craftsmen of its shores have made 
their names honorably known from London to the " city of Pekin," 
and now compete with England and Scotland for supremacy in trade, 
confident of surpassing the industries of the Clyde on the banks of 
the Delaware. 

The Restless explored her way to " Pye Bay," now Nahant Bay, 



lO SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

Massachusetts ; there she fell in with Christiaensen's ship, the Fortune, 
also on a cruise. Leaving the Restless in command of Cornells Hen- 
dricksen, to be used in exploring on the coast and in the rivers, Block 
returned to North Holland and made his report to his employers. 
From his sketches and descriptions an elaborate " Figurative Map" was 
made, and laid before the States General, with a request for a charter 
for those who had procured the discovery of the lands delineated upon 
it, without delay. A special grant, dated October iith, 1614, was 
made to the Amsterdam partnership ; they were conceded the monop- 
oly of trade from forty to forty-five degrees north latitude on the coasts 
of America. The partnership took the title of " The United New 
Netherland Company." The territory assigned them was called New 
Netherland. At the same time, at Manhaddoes, or Manhattan, their 
principal fort was named " New Amsterdam." 

The first vessel built at Manhattan was the first to cruise the Dela- 
ware. Hudson, in 1609, was too fearful of getting aground to attempt 
explorations in Zuydt Baai, though less timid in the Noordt Riviere. 
Argall, on his return from his mysterious cruise in 1610, remained but 
a day at anchor in the Delaware, leaving the same evening for the 
Chesapeake, but, in 1616, circumstances led to an exploration of the 
Poutaxit. It happened that three fur traders, agents of the New 
Netherland Company, having left Fort Nassau (near Albany), and 
made their way along Indian trails to the mouth of the Schuylkill, 
were there kept prisoners; news of this reaching Manhattan, the 
Restless was sent from the Mauritius River, under command of Cor- 
nclis Hendricksen, to ransom the adventurous captives. Block had 
constructed the Onrust for shallow waters and inland navigation; 
so Hendricksen, on his arrival at Zuydt Baai, coasted fearlessly along 
the western shore, making careful observations, bartering with the 
natives for seal-skins and sables, and being delighted with the scenery, 
climate, and vegetable productions of the valley, until he arrived at 
Coaquannock, " the place of tall pines," now central Philadelphia; there 
he found and ransomed his countrymen for "kettles, beads, and other 
merchandise." 

The people at Manhattan now called the Delaware River New, South, 
or "Zuydt" River, and the southern Cape of Zuydt Baai, now called 
Henlopen, was soon known as Cape Cornells, after Cornelis Hendrick- 
sen. A point some miles south of Cape Cornelis was named Hinlopen, 
in honor of Thymen Jacobsen Hinlopen, of Amsterdam, one of the 
"Northern Company," engaged in the whale fisheries and explorations, 
by which Block was employed on his return from America. Cape 
Hinlopen was also called Inloopcn by the Dutch schippers, because 
it seemed to recede from sight when approached from the sea. The 
names of these capes have been transferred, and the name of Henlopen 
is now borne by the point at first named Cornelis. 



ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF CAPE MAY. II 

§ In 1620, Cornelius Jacobsen May, who in 16 14 commanded the 
Fortune of Hoorn in the explorations along the coast east of Man- 
hattan, came again to New Netherland in a new vessel called the 
"Blyde Boodschap," or Glad Tidings. This voyage was intended for 
the exploration of territories to the west of and below Manhattan, and 
those south of the fortieth degree to "Virginia," and was made to 
include Zuydt Baai and the Chesapeake, which the Blyde Boodschap 
ascended, and went up the James River to Jamestown. May carefully 
examined the bay and river of the Delaware, where Hendricksen had 
preceded him four years before, and then returning to Holland early 
in the summer of 1620, announced the discovery of "certain new 
populous and fruitful lands" along the Zuydt Riviere. The Poutaxit, 
Zuydt, or Delaware Bay, as the Indians, Dutch, and English had 
named it, was after this called "Nieuw Port Mey," and the name of 
" Cape Mey" was given to the southern point of New Jersey, then as 
now "the best bathing place in the world." 

May, as Hendricksen had done, indeed as every one does who visits 
Cape May in summer, found the climate charming. It was the highest 
compliment they could imagine, when the Dutch explorers, a home- 
loving though voyaging people, declared the climate of the Delaware 
was "like to that of Holland;" as good as home. As it happened, 
both the nomen and cognomen of Cornelius Jacobsen May were 
applied to capes at the mouth of the Delaware, but the name of 
Cornelius, given in honor of Hendricksen, has been thrust aside and 
made insignificant, while the fame of Cape May has become world- 
wide, and summer by summer its increasing attractions add to its 
popularity, as time multiplies its appreciative visitors. 

§ The principles of the Lutheran Reformation gave permanence and 
character to the colonization of the United States ; the hand of perse- 
cution pointed the way to New Netherland, and the valleys of the Hud- 
son and the Delaware became an asylum from ecclesiastical despotism 
even while the Puritans of New England, jealous of their own freedom, 
denied liberty to others. When, in 1623, the great Dutch West India 
Company, complete in organization, sought to people its territories, the 
victims of persecution offered themselves as its first and most desirable 
emigrants. 

When the Hollanders, after their revolt against Spain and the Inqui- 
sition, in 1565, formed the Union of Utrecht, the Belgic provinces of 
Hainault, Namur, Luxemburg, Limburg, and Liege, having mostly 
Roman Catholic citizens, did not join the Dutch Confederation ; still, 
many of the Belgic people were Protestants, and as such were victims 
of persecution under Philip II. of Spain. Speaking the old French lan- 
guage, these people were termed Gallois; they fled by thousands to 
Holland, where their skill as well as their faith secured them protection 
and a welcome. In low Dutch the name of the rcfucfces became 



12 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

" Waalsche," which the English rendered Walloons. The farmers 
among the Walloons found poor encouragement in Holland, and in 
1622 a number of them offered to emigrate to Virginia if assured 
municipal freedom. Some delay followed their application to the 
British Minister at the Hague, and meantime those willing to form a 
settlement were, at the suggestion of the Provincial States of Holland, 
engaged as colonists by the Dutch West India Company, and em- 
ployed in Holland until such time as the perfect organization of that 
corporation would enable its Directors to send the Walloons to New 
Netherland. 

Having by virtue of their charter taken possession of their domain 
in 1622, the Dutch West India Company secured the assent of the 
States General to their articles of internal government the 21st of 
June, 1623. The same month three trading ships were dispatched 
to Manhattan " to maintain the course of traffic," and a special effort 
was made to colonize " Nova Belgia." The " New Netherland," a ship 
of two hundred and sixty tons, was fitted up, and on board her were 
embarked a company of thirty families, mostly the Walloons who had 
offered to settle in Virginia. The superintendence of the ship and 
colony was entrusted to Cornelius Jacobsen May, who was appointed to 
remain in New Netherland as First Director; his second in command 
on the ship being Schipper Adriaen Joris, of Theinpont. The expe- 
dition left the Texel early in March, and, following the southern route 
by the Canary Islands and Guiana, came in safety to Manhattan, the 
beginning of May. At the mouth of the North River the emigrants 
repulsed a party of Frenchmen, who were about to erect the arms of 
France; the French ship, however, renewed her attempt at Zuydt Raai, 
but was driven off from there by the Dutch settlers or traders. At an 
early date the Dutch established a lookout at Cape May, and from the 
time Cornelius Hendricksen in the Onrust explored the Delaware, 
they were generally well informed of whatever took place thereabouts, 
and frequently warned off whoever entered. 

At Manhattan, Director May left several families, and a number of 
sailors and men from the New Netherland, for the settlement of South 
River and the shore of the sound eastward. The ship then proceeded 
with difficulty up the North River, and landed her company just above 
Castle Island, on the western bank of the Hudson, at Albany. There 
"a fort with four angles, named Orange," which had been plotted the 
year before, was soon com[)lctcd ; the industrious Walloons "put the 
spade in the earth," and when the next yacht sailed for Holland, their 
corn " was nearly as hii^h as a man, so that they were getting along 
bravely." Brave hearts, heroic souls, the verdant corn you tilled struck 
no root so deep in the soil of the New World as the faith for which you 
were exiles, no harvest spread so rich a growth as the principles of 
freedom and toleration you planted here! Down the Hudson every 







■ — ^1 1 



LOVE AND PEACE IN THE WILDERNESS. 13 

year floats the wealth of granaries, richer than Egypt, but the spirit of 
Reh'gious Liberty and Civil Independence, entrenched in the hearts of 
millions, bids defiance to intriguing priests and threatening tyrants as it 
breathes the benediction of " Peace on earth and good will to men" 
over the vast expanse of a mighty continent. 

To prevent attempts to occupy Zuydt Baai, the fort projected in 
1622 was, by order of Director May, speedily completed. It was built 
five miles below Philadelphia, on the Jersey side of the river, of great 
logs, and named Fort Nassau, the first post of that name, on the island 
near Albany, having been destroyed by flood and ice. There were 
four weddings on board the New Netherland during her two-months' 
voyage from Holland over the sunny Southern seas. Director May, 
who was a kindly man, had been directed to govern his people " as a 
father, not as an executioner;" and it was with a touch of romance, as 
well as paternal care, that he selected these eight newly-married Wal- 
loons, and sent them, about the first of June, in a yacht, with as many 
sailors, to abide at Fort Nassau. They were far from home, from 
friends, even from civilization, a mere handful in the wilderness among 
savages, but they were enough ; each for the other of every pair, and 
all for each of the quadruple family. It was a fitting and poetic thing 
that the valley which was to welcome the men of peace, and grow in 
peace to be the home of freedom, should owe its first historic settle- 
ment to young and joyous brides, with their free and hopeful partners. 
It was in harmony also that they should come in the fresliness of 
summer, when the very air was balm, when every leaf told of life and 
vigor, when every forest aisle was sweet with woodland fragrance and 
echoing with bird songs, every note swelling the all-pervading melody, 
one perfect chorus, whose glad refrain was evermore of love, and still 
of universal, all-embracing love. 

Eighteen of the Walloon families settled at Albany, others went for 
a time to the House of Good Hope, at Hartford, Connecticut ; others 
made themselves homes, in comfort and happiness, on Long Island. 
There, in June, 1625, Sarah Rapelje, the first white child of New Neth- 
erland, was born ; and thereabouts, in usefulness and honor, the de- 
scendants of the Calvanist Gallois still reside. 

§ Of Cornelius Jacobscn May, who was formally installed during 
the summer of 1623 as the first Director-General of New Netherland, 
there is but little more to be said, but that little is entirely to his 
credit. "'Tis better to govern by love and friendship than by force," 
wrote his superiors in Holland ; and May acted in the spirit of his 
instructions, to " the great contentment of the people." Among the 
Indians at Fort Nassau May's little colony of brides and grooms were 
unharmed, while at both Manhattan and Fort Orange the Indians 
"were all as quiet as lambs, and came and traded with all the free- 
dom imaginable." It required other men than May, and other means 



H 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



than " love and friendship," to arouse the savage in the red man of 
America. 

Mentioned as a man of experience at the time of his appointment, 
Director May had many unrecorded adventures. During one of his 
earliest voyages to America he found the colonists at Manhattan suf- 
fering for stores and clothing. From his own ship he supplied their 
necessities, and the grateful Manhattanese celebrated the timely relief 
by giving the name of Port May to their harbor. 

The voyage of Director May to the Delaware, in 1620, was com- 
memorated by the name of New Port May, applied to the bay of the 
Delaware, and by that of Cape May, ever since retained by the southern 
point of New Jersey. 

Thus circumstances supposed to indicate the vanity of May in affix- 
ing his name to various localities are explained either as a just tribute 
to the deeds of another exploring " Cornelius," or the grateful and 
graceful act of his people. 

Cape May is one of the very few points about the Delaware which 
retain the names first given them by white men ; but of the thousands 
who visit it annually, very many are not aware of the source from which 
that name was derived. Some, careless of history, infer from their 
pleasant experience of its balmy atmosphere that Cape May derived its 
appellation from the May-like breezes which make its summers "balmy 
as the breath of spring." But " the Cape," especially since the improve- 
ment of Sea Grove, has too many charming attractions to need mis- 
representation to make it popular. By nature and improvement Cape 
May is superior as a seaside resort, but its name is significant only as 
a memento of the old-time voyages of the Hollanders, and of their 
regard for the character and exploits of their popular Superintendent. 

Though the name of Cornelius Jacobsen May disappears from this 
history, the admirers of Cape May have reason to be proud of the name 
it bears, since it recalls only deeds of courage and goodness, such as 
confer an honest fame in the history of time, and crown with happiness 
the pure in heart amid the glories of eternity. 

§ But while perfect peace and fair prosperity marked the history of 
their colonics, the Directors of the Dutch West India Company were 
disturbed by the enterprise of a person destined to play an important 
part in the events of New Netherland. A mariner of Hoorn, North 
Holland, by the name of David Pietersen Dc Vries, who had several 
times voyaged to Newfoundland, procured a commission from the King 
of France, and, dividing his venture with some Rochelle merchants, he 
bought a small vessel for a voyage to Canada, for fish and peltries. 
Determined to prevent all ships but their own sailing to North Amer- 
ica from Holland, the Directors seized the vessel of De Vries as it lay 
in the harbor of Hoorn ready to sail, and detained it until an admoni- 
tory mandate of the States General ordered its release. De Vries re- 



FIRST PURCHASE OF MANHATTAN. 



15 



ceived his vessel after much delay; although his v»oyage was broken 
up, his claim for damages was evaded, and, suffering from corporate 
injustice, the enterprising navigator was compelled to bide his time 
and await another chance of fortune. 

Director William Verhulst presided over New Netherland in 1625. 
He visited the Delaware and extended his voyage far up to the falls 
at Trenton; there on an island in the bend of the river another trading 
post was established, and for a time occupied by several families of 
Walloons. Verhulst returned to Holland in 1626, and Peter Minuit 
became Director-General of New Netherland. "To superadd a higher 
title" than that supposed to be derived from discovery and occupation, 
Minuit purchased Manhattan from the Indians. The island contained 
about twenty-two thousand acres, and was bought of the natives "for 
the value of sixty guilders," — about twenty-four dollars. 

Having bought Manhattan, the Dutch began a fort, "to be faced 
with cut stone," for its defense; for the misbehavior of some of the 
colonists had given reason to fear just hostility. About the same time 
the posts on South River were much reduced, and in 1628 left un- 
tenanted, in order to strengthen Manhattan. Still there were in all 
probability settlers left on the Delaware, rK3t perhaps the servants of 
the Company, but " vrye persoonen," who had reason to trust their 
Indian neighbors, and led a roving, adventurous life among them; but 
of these adventurers history, made up of corporation documents, has 
nothing to relate. Before the completion of the fort at Manhattan, it 
was called Fort Amsterdam, and made the seat of government. There 
has been a great amount and variety of government on the island of 
New York since that date, and not a little misgovernment; but with it 
all an undeniable increase of trade, and a most notable advance in the 
price of real estate. 

§ The United Provinces of the Batavian Republic elaborated the idea 
of federal union, but their institutions failed to develop personal liberty; 
the peasantry of Holland had therefore too lijttle self-reliance to emigrate, 
and a plan was evolved to encourage colonization, called the Charter 
of Privileges and Exemptions. By the provisions of this new charter 
of 1629, whoever of the stockholders of the Dutch West India 
Company established a colony of fifty persons within four years in 
New Netherland, became a " Patroon" or " Lord of the Manor." The 
Patroon had jurisdiction over the settlement he founded, and, by 
peaceful purchase from the natives, might hold and own the lands on 
the sea-shore or river-bank for sixteen miles, and as far inland as "the 
situation of the occupiers would admit;" or the land each side of a 
river could be held half as far, with a pro rata increase for more 
colonists in each case. 

While the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions was under consid- 
eration, several directors of the Dutch West India Company, tempted 



1 



1 6 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

by the concessions it made, undertook to forestall its provisions, and 
embezzle for themselves in advance the richest territories of the cor- 
poration. These crafty schemers sent three ships to America with 
agents to locate manors, and buy the land of the Indians. One of these 
ships entered the Delaware in May, and on the ist of June, 1629, a 
{^\N days before the adoption of the charter in Holland, "two persons," 
who came on the ship, bought for directors Samuel Godyn and Samuel 
Blommaert, from the natives, a tract of land two miles wide, which 
extended from Cape Henlopen thirty-two miles up the bay to the 
mouth of the river. 

At the first meeting of the Amsterdam Chamber after the adoption 
of the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, Director Samuel Godyn 
gave notice that he as Patroon occupied the bay of the South River, 
having notified Minuit to register his possession of the same at New 
Amsterdam. To remove the dissatisfaction which was manifest in the 
chamber at the course taken by them, and to secure capital, the Pa- 
troons admitted Killiaen Van Rensselaer, Johannes de Laet, the his- 
torian, Mathias Van Ceulen, Hendrick Hamel, Johan Van Haringhoeck, 
and Nicholas Van Sittorigh, as partners in their enterprise. In order to 
secure his services as supervntendent, Pieterzen De Vries was made an 
equal partner in the concern. The ship "Walvis," or Whale, carrying 
eighteen guns, and a yacht, were fitted out at once for an expedition 
to the Zuydt Baai. The two vessels were loaded with colonists, stock, 
animals, seeds, tools, and the requisites of an agricultural colony. At 
the suggestion of Godyn, implements were also taken for the capture 
of the whales, seals, and sturgeons, then abundant in the Delaware. 

Amply supplied, the expedition left the Texel December 12th*, 1630, 
under command of Pieter Heyes, of Edam, North Holland, Peterzen 
De Vries remaining in Amsterdam. Through carelessness on board 
the Walvis, the yacht was captured by Dunkirk privateers, but the 
ship kept on, and, passing by Tortugas, where a part of her colonists 
were bound on French account, but which was found in Spanish hands, 
she completed her trip. In April, the Whale arrived safely at Zuydt 
Baai. Poinding a safe landing and convenient harbor, with islands, 
good oysters, and very fertile land, the colony was landed up the 
stream on the banks of a " kill" (creek, or small river), near the present 
Lewes, Del. Tliis stream, which was called after the city of Hoorn, 
Hoornkill, Hooikill, etc., afterwards corrupted to Whoorkill, or Whore- 
kill, was also called the river of Swans, and was reported to be two 
leagues from " Cape Kornelis," now Cape Henlopen, the site of the 
splendid light that, with its equal and neighbor at Sea Grove, illumin- 
ates the wide entrance to the Delaware. In the vale where the Dutch 
colonists landed there were many swans, and hence they gave their 
settlement the name of Swaanendael (Swandalc). 

Gillis Hoasctt, a former agent of Van Rensselaer's in the purchase 



ORIGINAL DEED OF CAPE MAY. 17 

of lands from the North River Indians, was placed in command of the 
station ; a large brick house was built of Holland brick, and enclosed 
with palisades ; this building served at once as a residence for all the 
colony, a storehouse, and a fort. As soon as the settlement was well 
begun, Commissary Hossett and Schipper Heyes visited the Jersey 
shore, and, as agents of Godyn and Blommaert, bought of ten Indian 
chiefs, on May 5th, 1630, a tract of land twelve miles along the shore 
of the bay, from Cape May Point to the north, and twelve miles inland 
above, and including Cape May. The lands on the northern and 
eastern shores of Delaware Bay were in possession of the great and 
influential but peaceable tribe, called Lenni Lenape (the original 
people). From them must have been obtained the original title to 
Cape May ; and the Nanticokes, who occupied what is now Delaware, 
must have been the grantors who, on July 15th, 1630, ratified by treaty 
the sale of the western shore of the bay, made to Godyn and Blom- 
maert's agents the year before. 

§ Such is the record of the first transaction in real estate at Cape 
May; the advance in value on the smallest building lot in Sea Grove, 
for the current year, is represented by a sum of money greater than 
was needed to buy the lands of all the lower Delaware; yet both 
parties were well pleased with the speculation. The Indians, who 
knew but little more of the full purport and effect of a deed of land 
than the deer of the primeval woods, were delighted with the "pres- 
ents" they received, and charmed by the civil and novel manners of 
their liberal customers. The patroons needed but to examine their pur- 
chase to become satisfied they had come into possession of a land of 
promise. Zuydt Baai was now called Godyn's Baai, by which name it 
was afterwards well known to the Dutch. After spending a few weeks 
at Swaanendael, Heyes, with Hossett in company, visited New Amster- 
dam, and there, on the 3d of June, 163 1, had the purchase they had 
effected formally recorded and attested by Director-General Minuit 
and his council. The deeds of the lands purchased on the Delaware 
for Godj'n and Blommaert were deposited at Fort Amsterdam, and 
conveyed to Holland, but are now in the archives of the State of New 
York, at Albany. 

Whaling was undertaken by Heyes in Godyn's Baai, but the experi- 
ment was a failure, and, in September, 163 1, the Walvis sailed for Hol- 
land. Gillis Hossett remained at Swaanendael to superintend that 
colony, and, by more thorough explorations of the new manors and 
their resources, prepare the way for future settlements. 

Pioneer explorations must have been magnificent in those days. As 
Hossett sailed over the waters of the Delaware he saw a roadstead and 
harbor, where all the commerce of Europe could ride secure; the low 
shores on either side reminded him and his companions of Holland, 
as they offered every facility for the construction of canals, in broad 



1 8 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

marshes, which could easily be redeemed from the sea, and turned into 
fertile fields. But, unlike Holland, Cape May had dense forests of 
varied timber near the shores, for the countless hulls of navies, such as 
the world had never seen, and beyond, yet near, interminable swamps 
where the giant cedars towered, — an arsenal of imperishable planks 
and spars to equip every craft, though each of them were more huge 
than ever sailed the Texel, or startled the dreams of shipwrights beside 
the Zuyder Zee. The waters swarmed with fish : the whale, the por- 
poise, the sturgeon, and the cod abounded; besides, there were black 
fish, blue fish, "green" fish, "silver" fish, and "variegated" fish ; there 
were mackerel, gar-fish, drum, bass, perch, herrings, flounders, turbots, 
soles, eels, anchovies, mullets, porgies, smelts, and shiners, all affording 
*^an ocean full" of excellent food; then there was also the flying-fish, 
and scores of other varieties more curious than eatable. 

There is no historic evidence that Gillis Hossett or the mariner Peter 
Heyes tarried to catch all these kinds of fish; if not, it was their own 
fault; the fish were there, and one summer, just two and a quarter cen- 
turies later. Secretary Spencer F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institute, 
caught them all except the whale, the sturgeon, the porpoise, and the 
cod-fish, in the waters near Cape May; moreover, any visitor of Sea 
Grove may have the same pleasure. The whale rarely visits the Dela- 
ware now; the porpoise still rolls lazily against the tide, but the stur- 
geon are comparatively few; yet if any transient dweller by the sea 
despises the capture of the smaller fry, and aspires to wage war upon 
veritable monsters of the deep, he can, by taking passage for deep 
water on the yacht of the Sea Grove Association, not only enjoy a trip 
over genuine ocean billows, but may, if favored by St. Peter, return 
with " a string" of sJiarks, and an appetite like that of the marine out- 
law he captures. 

At the time of Godyn's purchases, the marshes of Cape May were 
much more extensive, and the sounds and thoroughfares larger. The 
explorer found the inland waters of Cape May abounding with fine 
oysters, clams, crabs, and other shell-fish, as at present. The marshes 
around the sounds, and the savannas or slashes between the sandy 
beaches, were the haunts of countless water-fowl, some remarkable for 
their large size and notable appearance, while many of various kinds 
were estimable as game birds and known to the natives then as deli- 
cious delicacies, as well as to the sportsman and bott vivant of the 
present. In their proper season the Canada geese were immensely 
numerous, and their habitual resorts were also frequented by more than 
two dozen varieties of duck and plover, in flocks or pairs, by tens of 
thousands; among them was the world-renowned "canvas-back" [Anas 
valisncria). The meadows, marshes, and shores were overrun by snipe 
and loons, woodcock, rail, curlew, bitterns, herons, sand-pipers, and tern. 
Eagles, cormorants, hawks, gulls, and other fish-loving varieties of birds 



UPLAND BIRDS OF CAPE MAY. 



19 



hovered over the waves and the quiet waters for prey, or, pirate-h'ke, 
plundered others of the scaly prize. On the uplands the variety of 
birds was vastly greater — quite too numerous to mention outside of 
scientific catalogue. The bald eagle, and ten or a dozen kind of hawks, 
half as many owls, and eight or ten kinds of fly-catchers exercised their 
capacity upon their varied and proper game ; while the turkey-buzzard, 
with the help of several kinds of crows, was the common scavenger of 
the land. 

Master Evelyn, William Penn, and others mention wild turkeys of 
the Delaware country which weighed from forty-five to fifty pounds. 
Grouse, partridges, pigeons, doves, and robins were abundant. Of birds 
of song there was no lack. There were fourteen kinds of warblers ; 
there were thrushes, larks, vieros, finches, sparrows, orioles, bobolinks, 
blackbirds, blue jays, cuckoos, and mocking birds, with hosts of others 
more or less musical. Of birds remarkable for plumage there were 
many fine species. The great blue, white, and snowy herons, and some 
of the ducks, were very handsome. The snowy owl, well named, was 
a choice specimen, while red birds, yellow birds, blue birds, scarlet 
birds, indigo birds, golden birds, and numerous party-colored birds, lent 
animation to the woods. 

Besides all these, the humming bird, bright flashing gem of the air, 
bred at Cape May. Since the advent of white men upon the coast 
some varieties of birds have almost or quite disappeared, yet no locality 
in the United States surpasses Sea Grove and its vicinity in advantages 
for the naturalist. The distinguished American ornithologist, Wilson, 
resided during different seasons in the neighborhood of Cape May. 
y\t such times he was the guest of the elder Thomas Beesley, of Bees- 
ley's Point, and his visits are yet remembered by some of the oldest 
people. Thomas Beesley declares, in a too brief note to one of his 
scientific contributions, that the interest awakened there by Wilson in 
the study of ornithology has never ceased. To that interest and a 
lively intelligence are to be credited the catalogue of birds and beasts 
which Thomas Beesley has added to the natural science of his native 
county, and the fact that " Beesley's Point" has become one of the 
important centres of scientific interest in South Jersey. It is a legend 
that birds choose for their habitat the most favorable and pleasant 
lands — the fairest scenes. Upon this point Thomas Beesley, in a note 
to his catalogue of Cape May birds, quotes a citizen of Cape May as 
saying, " If birds in their choice of a residence are gifted in deter- 
mining what is the fairest and what is best, there can be no question 
but that the County of Cape May is among the most attractive portions 
of the earth ; for here they congregate in as great a variety and abund- 
ance as upon any other portion of at least the civilized globe." 

The intermediate latitude of Cape May and its consequent equable 
climate, with an uncommon distribution of ocean, sound, lake, river, 



20 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

swamp, tliicket, wood, marsh, and meadow, afford varied attractions 
to the denizens of the air. Birds of the north and of the south, with 
many a feathered beauty "to the manor born," there congregate and 
dwell, or visit the scene on flashing wing with tumultuous song one 
after another, as the passing year rolls its changing glories through 
the sky. To the plodding pot-hunter the birds of Cape May supply 
— his dinner; to the sportsman, choice and abundant game; to the 
naturalist, an unequaled field of study; to the artist, forms and hues 
of beauty; to the invalid, cheer and diversion; to all, a song; to the 
thoughtful and pious soul, most — bright examples of nature's handi- 
work, a joyous testimony to the universal providence of God! 

The pioneers of Cape May were very practical persons, men who 
would turn away from the finest display of plumage and the sweetest 
song to capture a good fat goose or pursue the woodland creatures for 
their skins; hunting for fur-bearing animals in South Jersey over two 
centuries ago, they could hardly go amiss. The bison or buffalo, the 
black bear, the panther, the wolf, the catamount, and the deer, were 
the largest of the wild beasts of Cape May; of the smaller species there 
were opossums, raccoons, foxes, minks, otters, and, most valuable of 
all, the beaver. Some half-dozen kinds of squirrels filled the trees, 
muskrats infested the streams, rabbits were plenty, and the skunks, in 
bad odor, were numerous, waiting a change of fashion to give value to 
their handsome pelt. Twenty years ago a half-dozen black bears in 
an autumn would perchance be killed in the Cape May County swamps, 
a few deer would also be taken; the beaver is probably extinct; the 
opossum, the raccoon, the rabbit, the pclecat, the squirrel, the otter, 
and an occasional fox are the remaining animals of Cape May. 

The agents of the Dutch patroons gave little attention to the 
flowers which adorned the lands they bought, yet a botanist would 
have gathered them with delight. The same causes which make Cape 
May the resort of the ornithologist and ichthyologist have rendered all 
South Jersey a vast botanical garden famous on both sides of the 
Atlantic, some of its plants being peculiar and local. In 1748 and 
1749 Peter Kalm, botanist to the King of Sweden, made a collection 
in South Jersey, the sight of which made Linnaeus forget an attack of 
gout; the Kaluiia, a species of laurel, was so called by Linnaeus in 
honor of Kalm. As recent authorities in the botany of South Jersey, 
Maurice Beesley, M.D., Samuel Ashmead, and Mary Treat, of Vine- 
land, have been extensively quoted. 

§ The aboriginal Indian was a savage and a pagan; the mistake of 
most Christian colonists was to consider themselves saints, and the 
red man a natural devil. The valleys of the Delaware and Schuylkill 
were inhabited at the time of the Dutch settlements by the tribe of 
Lenni Lenape, a name which signified "the original people." The 
Lenni Lenape were divided into Mantaunaks or Delawares, and 



LENNI LENAPE SEWAN. 21 

Muncccs, Munseys, or Mincees ; the last lived above the Sankitan, 
Stankekan, or Sanhickan falls, near Trenton, and toward the Hudson. 
The Lenni Lenape were a superior tribe; they came from beyond the 
Mississippi, and conquered their way to the Atlantic. Subsequently, 
by the terms of a treaty made with the Hodensaunee Konoshion, or 
Iroquois Confederation, they abandoned war, becoming "women," that 
is to say, non-combatants, and, as the Indian matrons were, referees and 
peacemakers. Hendrick Aupaumut, chief of the Muheconuck, Mohican, 
or Mohegan tribe, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in his report of his 
mission as the embassador of the United States to the Western tribes 
(Mem. Hist. Soc. Pa., vol. ii.). calls the Delawares " Grandfethers," 
and adds that the British and Five Nations depended upon them to 
make peace, as " this nation had the greatest influence with the South- 
ern, Western, and Northern nations;" also that the Lenni Lenape, since 
about 1600, had been grandfathers or "wise ones," to whom the tribes 
looked as judges in arbitration. 

The general traits of American Indians, aside from the usages of 
war, characterized the Lenni Lenape; one notable habit of theirs was 
peculiar to such tribes as inhabited the shores of New Jersey and 
New York, or lived elsewhere near localities like Cape May. The 
Indians used no salt, but preserved their fish and meats by drying and 
smoking; at the shore they boiled, strung, and dried clams, which were 
used to season their insipid fare. The manufacture of this Indian 
delicacy left behind an immense quantity of shells, those of the common 
clam, the Venus mercenaria, which the Indians called Pequonuck or 
Quahaug. These shells, in a broken state, are to be found in great 
heaps on the shores of the sounds and water-courses in the vicinity 
of Sea Grove. The fragmentary condition of the shells distinguishes 
the shell heaps of Indian creation from the beds and mounds of shells 
which owe their origin to natural causes, or to the bivalve-consuming 
propensities of white men. The Indian resorted to the shore of the 
Atlantic, not alone for health and comfort, but to make viomy. Near 
Sea Grove, as on the shores of Sewan-hacky (Sewan-land), Long 
Island, New York, an aboriginal " mint" was kept in operation, and 
the circulating medium of exchange there issued was current at a fixed 
value all over the continent. This Indian money was called variously 
sewan, suckauhock, wampum, wampompcague, peague, etc., and was 
coined in the form of beads, from shells, and strung on strings some- 
what after the manner of Chinese "cash." 

There were two kinds of sewan. The black — " the gold of the In- 
dians" — was made from the black portion of the clam-shells, and called 
suckauhock. It was rated at double the value of the white, called 
wampum, which was made from the stem of the periwinkle {Liitoniuc)\ 
hence the shell heaps the Indians have left along the shore of Cape 
May contain mostly the white part of clam-shells, broken in small 



22 SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 

pieces to secure the black and valuable portions. Aside from the color 
of the wampum, it was criticised by the natives as to its form and 
finish, and the usages of aboriginal commerce required that the beads 
should be uniform in size and shape, and bored in the centre. To test 
sewan, the Indians drew the strings of beads deftly across their noses; 
if they found them smooth, uniform, and well strung, they passed at 
par; the worn or imperfect were discounted or rejected. The sewan 
was used not only as currency, but as jewelry and material for orna- 
mentation. " The Dutch, at Albany," says Kalm, " made and sold a 
great deal of sewan in their extensive trade with the Five Nations. 
There were at one time sixty or seventy shops in Albany where sewan 
was made, and the Iroquois called the town Laaphanachking, — i.e., "the 
place of stringing wampum." Sewan was also made in other places, 
" by poor people," and the Indians suffered the inconvenience of " an 
inflated currency" after a time. The New Netherlands accepted sewan 
in trade themselves, good wampum being in some colonies as current 
as silver; it was voted "to goe six a penny in New Haven in 1640." 
Sewan, or wampum, was the currency of New Netherlands in 164 1 ; 
afterwards the contributions to the churches were paid in it. At New 
Amsterdam " four beads of good black, well-strung wampum, or eight 
of the white," were reckoned as one stuyver, — a Dutch coin about a 
cent in value. In 1650, " there being at present no other specie," sewan 
was made lawfully current, at the rate of three black or six white beads 
of "commercial .sewan," or four black and six white of the "base 
strung," for one stuyver, the rate ordered "to goe" in Nieu Haven. By 
this the drain of " specie" into New England was checked. 

The Indian had no banks, and was innocent of " corners," " bonuses," 
"divvies," brokerages, commissions, margins, "puts and calls," and 
" irregularities," yet he was a financier in his way, and managed " ex- 
change" for his own benefit. In heavy transactions, sewan, either 
suckauhock or wampum, was counted by the fathom, measured by the 
spread arms of an Indian. Commissary Hudde, of Fort Nassau, in 
1648, complained that the Cape May tribe made barter "rather too 
much against them," as " the Indians always take the largest and tallest 
among them to trade with us," by which means the long-armed " tel- 
lers" compassed a long price for their clansmen's beaver-skins. 

" In 1756," says Dr. Beesley, " Jacob Spicer, of Cape May, advertised 
to barter goods for all kinds of produce and commodities, and, among 
the rest, particularly designated wampum (suckauhock). He offered a 
reward of five pounds to the person that should manufacture the most 
wampum. He succeeded in procuring a quantity of the wampum, and, 
before sending it off to Albany and a market, weighed a shot-bag full 
of silver coin, and the same shot-bag full of wampum, and found the 
latter (by weight) most valuable by ten per cent." After the fall of 
Oswego he chronicles the decline of the wampum traffic. The Narra- 



DE VRIES'S FIRST VOYAGE TO THE DELAWARE. 23 

gansetts and Pequods, who were able to produce sewan on their shores, 
kept themselves rich and powerful by the possession and use of it. 
The Cape May Indians held similar advantages, and the accumulated 
refuse of their work shows that they were not neglectful of their op- 
portunities. 

Such, two and a half centuries ago, were the people, such the sur- 
roundings, among which lay the assumed territories of the High and 
Mighty Dutch West India Company, and the intended manors of the 
would-be patroons, Godyn and Blommaert. 

§ The unfair advantage Godyn, Blommaert, and a few others had 
conspired to take of the Charter of Privileges and Exemptions gave 
great offense, and partisan feeling became bitter against the patroons 
and those who defended their claims. Director-General Minuit, who 
was cognizant of the operations of the patroons, was recalled from his 
office, but Minuit had simply carried out the laws and orders of the 
company. Sensible of the injustice done him, Minuit transferred his 
authority to the Manhattan Council, and sailed for Holland to vindi- 
cate himself, in March, 1632, bearing with him not only his own trou- 
bles, but sad news for the patroons and the friends of the colonists at 
Swaanendael. 

The first accounts from Swaanendael received by the patroons, some 
time after the Walvis left that colony, reported that all had been well, 
and that the colony was pleasantly prosperous. The ill luck of the 
Walvis had discouraged the proprietors somewhat, but Godyn was still 
sanguine about the whale fishery, and, in February, 1632, it was agreed 
that a ship and yacht should be fitted out, with De Vries himself as 
patroon and commander, to fish in the South Bay during the winter of 
1633. This ship and the yacht Squirrel were accordingly fitted out for 
a whaling voyage, and were ready to sail the last of May. On the 24th 
of May, just before De Vries got off, news was received at Amsterdam, 
having been brought by Director-General Minuit, by the way of Ports- 
mouth, that Swaanendael had been destroyed by the Indians. 

De Vries, though distressed by the news, put to sea, but an unskill- 
ful pilot ran his ship on the sands off Dunkirk; she with difficulty got 
into Portsmouth the 25th of May. The ship was made seaworthy, 
and sailed the ist of August, in company with the great ship "New 
Netherland, of six or eight hundred tunncs," which had been built at 
Manhattan, in 163 1, and was then returning from her first voyage to 
Holland. 

De Vries arrived on December 5th, in the offing of Godj'n's Baai. 
As he neared the coast he saw no beacon kindled to give warning of 
his approach ; he heard no resounding and reassuring gun ; no signal 
waved to denote his looked-for arrival, and give the sign for joyous 
welcome. An ominous silence brooded everywhere, — only the waves 
dashed mournfully, and the tall cedars soughed in the blast of Decern- 



24 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



ber, as if they chanted a requiem. No Indians appearing, a well-armed 
boat was sent into the Horekill the next day, to open communication. 
Finding none of the savages about, the boat pushed on, and landed at 
Swaanendael, where discoveries were soon made which justified the 
worst apprehensions of De Vries. The colony had disappeared, — 
buildings, gardens, plantations, fishing-stations, whale-boats, all were 
gone. Only ashes and fire-blasted ruins remained, surrounded by the 
wolf-gnawed and bleaching bones of his comrades and servants. 

In despondency De Vries returned to his yacht, and a gun was fired 
to call in the Indians. The next morning a smoke was seen arising 
from near the ruins of Swaanendael. The boat went into the creek, 
and a few of the savages were seen prowling about. They were shy, 
and the crew of the boat distrustful. The yacht gave more protection 
from treacherous arrows than the open boat, and so De Vries ran her 
into the creek. The Indians soon came to the shore, but for some 
time none could be persuaded to come on board. Finally one venture- 
some fellow made bold to dare the vengeance of the Swannekins, and 
came alone among the Dutch. De Vries gave him a " cloth dress," 
and sent word by him to his chief that he wished to make a peace. 
The Indians at once became more familiar, and that night one of them 
stayed on board, and was induced to give the particulars of the tragic 
fate of the colony. 

According to the story of the Indian on the yacht, Gillis Hossett had 
considered it requisite to post the arms of Holland, painted on a sheet 
of tin, by attaching them to a pillar he set up, the site of which the 
Indian pointed out. An Indian, attracted by the sheen of the metal, 
" not thinking he was doing amiss," carefully removed the shield for 
his own purpose. Hossett took much to heart the insult to the Bata- 
vian Republic, and angrily denounced the tribe for the offense of a 
person, as if it were some mighty matter. It was a great fuss to make 
about a bit of tin, but the Indians took it for earnest, and soon pre- 
sented Hossett the scalp of the culprit, to his avowed astonishment, 
chagrin, and disgust. 

Rebuked, humbled, thrown off, hurt in feeling, the jealous, vindictive 
sons of the forest returned to their wigwams, but not to live in peace. 
The Indians had a custom like that of the Jews, in " the avenger of 
blood." If a relative were slain, it was an obligation to avenge his fall 
unless " atonement" were made by the offender. This could be done 
by his paying, after the manner of the ancient Greeks, " blood-money," 
to " cover the graves of the dead." 

" If a l)iother bleed. 
On just atonement we remit the deed ; 
A sire the slaughter of his son forgives, 
The price of blood discharged, the murderer lives." 

(Pope: liiaJ, ix.) 



THE FATE OF SWAANENDAEL. 



25 



The Indian who had been killed at Swaanendael was a sachem. — 
vengeance could not be allowed to sleep. The aggrieved Indians held 
Hossett accountable as the cause of the murder, still he could at any 
time have purchased exemption for a few guilders' worth of goods; 
this he unwisely neglected to do, and was accordingly condemned to 
die, and the colony that harbored him was to share his fate. 

One day Hossett was sick and remained in the house, but one of his 
men, a housekeeper, being with him, when a lurking war party of 
Indians came near the place. In the yard a large bull-dog, or Dutch 
mastiff, was chained ; had he been loose, they would not have dared 
approach the house. Suddenly three Indians presented themselves, 
and offered a small lot of beaver-skins for sale. Learning that no 
others were near, they set upon Hossett and his servant and killed 
them at once. With the dog, " which they feared most," they had more 
trouble, and the Indian related with wonder and admiration that the 
brave guardian of the threshold never ceased to fight, and died only 
when pierced by twenty-five arrows. But for his chain, as they knew, 
the Dutch mastiff would have taught the bloody savages the difference 
between a dog of his breed and keep and one of their own skulking, 
mangy little curs. The men of the colony were at work in the 
adjacent gardens and cornfields ; they were approached in a friendly 
manner, and a treacherous attack made upon them. Whatever of 
courage they manifested, whatever of desperate heroism (for the 
Dutch were brave), is unknown, as it was unavailing ; one by one rap- 
idly they fell, far from their beloved " Faderlandt," among barbarous 
foes, perishing victims to the folly of their Governor and the revenge- 
ful passions of cruel savages. 

Shocked, saddened, disappointed, and involved in financial loss, De 
Vries was not discouraged, and made no useless attempt at revenge. 
The Indians were glad to make a formal treaty of peace with De Vries, 
which was brought about by his tact and coolness the following day. 
Receiving various presents, the bewildered Nanticokes departed in 
great joy to hunt for beaver-skins to trade with the prudent and reti- 
cent Hollander. Such is the awful story of the first bloodshed in the 
settlement of Delaware, and thus were the possessions of the Dutch 
" sealed with blood, and dearly enough bought." To De Vries the 
honor is due, that from that time war between the races was unknown, 
and bloodshed extremely rare in all the country round about Swaan- 
endael. 

Mindful of the plans and interests of his partners, De Vries tried the 
whale fishery; he had anticipated "royal work," but, from the imper- 
fection of their gear, the Dutchmen were not very successful. To eke 
out his supplies, De Vries, in his yacht, the Squirrel, with seven men 
made a trip up the Poutaxit, as the Indians called Zuydt, South, 
Godyn's, or Delaware Bay ; and above into the Lcnape-ittuck, Mack- 



26 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

erish-kitton, or Arasapha, as the red men had named the Zuydt, South, 
Godyn's, Prince Hendrick's, or Delaware River. It was New Year 
time, and the Dutch hoped to "buy some beans of the Indians." The 
bay and river were full of floatin^^ ice ; working his yacht through this, 
De Vries came, on the 5th of January, to Fort Nassau, finding none 
but Indians. 

The natives advised De Vries to go up the Timmer Kill, or Timber 
Kill, for his supplies; but a Sankitan, or Stankekan squaw warned the 
Dutch to keep out of the creeks, or the river Indians would murder 
them, as they had recently killed the crew of an English shallop, in 
" Count Ernest's River." Avoiding the creeks, therefore, De Vries 
went on up to Red Hook, or Mantes. There some forty Indians came 
on board, offering to barter beaver skins, and " playing on reeds to 
allay suspicion." Unaware that the Dutch were informed of their 
murder of the English crew, some of them wore the jackets of the 
men they had butchered. De Vries told them their " Maneto" had 
revealed their treacherous plans to him, and, driving them all on shore, 
returned to Fort Nassau. There several chiefs came on board the 
yacht, some of whom had worn the jackets at Red Hook, but now 
they were dressed in robes of fur. The Indians sat down in a solemn 
circle on the deck, and stated they had come to make a long peace ; 
a long ceremony, during which ten beaver-skins were presented, one 
after another, by the Indians, ratified the formal compact. For the skins 
presented in their ceremonies the Indians refused any compensation 
whatever. De Vries, however, bought other beaver-skins, and, procur- 
ing a small supply of corn and beans, sailed for his ship, and was on 
board the 13th of the month. 

Five days after, De Vries again started to coast along the shore and 
visit Fort Nassau. On the way he was a fortnight frozen into "Vine- 
yard Creek," where the Dutch shot a multitude of turkeys, "weighing 
from thirty to thirty-six pounds" each. It was the 3d of February 
before the yacht could be got up to its destination. By that time a war 
had broken out between the Minquas and the Sankitans, and no corn 
could be had. After much trouble from the ice, the yacht was got back 
to the ship, where a joyous welcome was given the long absent and 
adventurous voyagers by their anxious shipmates. 

Still short of [)rovisions, and ambitious to be the first Hollander to 
visit the Chesapeake, De Vries sailed on the 5th of March for Virginia. 
He visited Sir John Harvey, Governor of Virginia, and was courteously 
entertained by that noble knight. De Vries made Governor Harvey 
acquainted with the Dutch operations on the Delaware, and was able 
to identify the English crew whose murder he had heard of at Fort 
Nassau as one of eight men which Governor Harvey had sent the 
previous September into the Delaware, in a sloop, "to see if there was 
a river there." The Governor imagined his men "to have been swal- 



THE FIRST HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA. 2/ 

lowed up in the sea," having heard nothing from them until the sad 
news by Dc Vries made him acquainted with their fate. The patroon 
of Swaanendael and Cape May remained a week at Jamestown, and 
then, with an abundant supply of provisions, and a present of goats for 
Manhattan, where Governor Harvey had heard there were none, he 
returned to his fishermen in Zuydt Baai. 

Once more warmly welcomed by his company, the patroon learned 
that several whales had been captured, but more lost after being struck, 
the harpoons being defective. De Vries had, however, become satisfied 
that the whale fishery was less profitable than the fur trade, and pro- 
posed to carry out his original intention of a voyage to Newfoundland 
and the Saint Lawrence for fish and peltries. VVishing to examine the 
coast, De Vries sailed on board his yacht for Manhattan the 14th of 
April, and, coasting northward for two days, arrived safely at Fort Am- 
sterdam, leaving Swaanendael, Godyn's Baai, and the Arasapha once 
more to the whales, the savages, and the aboriginal wildness of nature. 

§ When De Vries arrived in New Amsterdam, on the i6th of 
April, 1633, he found the new Director-General, Wouter Van Twiller, 
on board the ship Soutberg, which had just arrived in the harbor. 
The information which De Vries gave Van Twiller aroused him to take 
measures to hold possession of Zuydt Baai, and the fur trade in the 
country adjoining; accordingly Arendt Corssen was appointed com- 
missary, and instructed to purchase a tract of land on the Schuylkill 
for a plantation and trading post, for both of which purposes the loca- 
tion there was highly esteemed. Corssen bought " for certain cargoes," 
from "the right owners and Indian chiefs," a tract called " Armen- 
veruis," lying about and on the Schuylkill. The Indian title being 
thus secured, the Dutch took formal possession of Pennsylvania, and 
established a trading house there, which, though soon abandoned for a 
time, was afterwards enlarged to a post or station and called Bevers- 
rede, being situated within the present bounds of Philadelphia. 

Among the improvements ordered by Van Twiller for the year 1633 
was " one large house," to be built at Fort Nassau on the Delaware. 
The work must have been neglected, for in 1635 a small party of Eng- 
lish from Point Comfort, Va., under the leadership of Captain George 
Holmes, and, as some have said, in the interest of Sir Edmund Plowden 
and his associates, took possession of Fort Nassau, which they found 
vacant. Thomas Hall, one of Holmes's men, deserted at F'ort Nassau, 
and, reaching Manhattan, gave information to Van Twiller. A Dutch 
force soon captured Holmes and his party, and took them to hort 
Amsterdam, from whence they were sent, " pack and baggage," back to 
Virginia. The Dutch, after the affair with Holmes, repaired and gar- 
risoned Fort Nassau, and gave more attention to the valley of the Dela- 
ware. The administration of Wouter Van Twiller ended early in the 
spring of 1638, he being superseded by William Kieft. 



28 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

§ Although the Dutch were the first to "occupy" the Delaware, 
Governor Sir John Harvey, of Virginia, had sent an unfortunate expe- 
dition there in 1632; and before the patent for Maryland was sealed 
that year, Sir John Lawrence, Sir Edmund Plowden, and others applied 
to King Charles I., of England, for a grant of Long Island and thirty 
miles square on the mainland, which they proposed to call " Syon." 
After the death of the first Lord Baltimore, before the full execution 
of the formalities of the grant of Maryland made to him, Plowden and 
his associates made a second application ; this time asking for Long 
Island, and the small isles between the thirtieth and fortieth degrees of 
north latitude, within six leagues from the mainland near Delaware Bay, 
and forty leagues square of the adjoining coast; to be held as a County 
Palatine, and called New Albion, " with the privileges as heretofore 
granted to Sir George Calvert, late Lord Baltimore, in Newfoundland." 
The king confirmed the grant made Lord Baltimore to his son and 
heir, but one month after the sealing of the Maryland patent the king 
(says Neill), on July 24th, 1632, ordered Sir John Coke to issue a patent 
for Long Island and the adjacent country to Plowden and his asso- 
ciates. 

On the 23d of September, 1633, Captain Thomas Young, gentleman, 
received a special commission from the King of England to organ- 
ize an expedition and explore in America. This expedition sailed in 
the spring of 1634, and with it came Master Robert Evelyn, Captain 
Young's nephew, as lieutenant. The voyage of Captain Young was 
in connection with the enterprise of Plowden for the settlement of New 
Albion, but from stress of weather, or lack of a pilot, his course led 
him into the Chesapeake ; there desertion weakened the company, but 
Young fitted out a shallop or pinnace at Jamestown, in July, and 
sailing to the Delaware with about fifteen men, established as the head- 
quarters of New Albion a post he called Eriwomeck, near the mouth 
of the Schuylkill, at Fort Ikwersrede, which the Dutch had just aban- 
doned. In September, as has been noted, George Holmes seized for 
the New Albion Company the vacant Eort Nassau, from which he was 
soon ousted by the Dutch. Lieutenant or " Master" Robert Evelyn 
went to England, early in 1635, upon some errand from which he soon 
returned; in 1637, he was appointed a surveyor by the Governor and 
Council of Virginia, but missed confirmation; he was afterwards proxy 
for St. George's Hundred, in the Maryland Assembly, but was again 
in England in 1641. At that time P2vel)'n and others published " a 
card," describing the valley of the Delaware as a fine place, where the 
English had traded since 1527, and where Evelyn himself had been 
stationed for four years with fifteen men, trading and exploring in 
safety. On Evelyn's return from luigland he was commissioned, June 
23d, 1642, to command and drill the militia, at Piscataway, four 
miles below Washington. The identity and character of Evelyn are 



PL O WD EN AND NEW ALBION. 



29 



important in this history, as he was the first recorded explorer and 
geographical describer of Sea Grove and Cape May, as is elsewhere 
related. 

Captain Young continued his explorations about the Delaware for 
about eighteen months, hoping to find there the entrance of a passage 
to India ; he became satisfied of the importance of the inland or back 
country, and, in 1636 or the year after, returned to England and asked 
for himself and his company a grant of whatever inland regions he 
might discover and explore. Sir Edmund Plowden remained in 
America until 1648, trying to settle the territories of New Albion, of 
which he was Earl Palatine; he did not succeed in this, owing to the 
opposition of the Dutch and others along the Delaware. Having ex- 
hausted his fortune during his stay of "about seven years" in this 
country, Plowden returned to England, by the way of New Amsterdam 
and Boston, "for supply." In London, in 1648, under the name of 
Beauchamp Plantagenet, Plowden published his " Description of New 
Albion," an inaccurate pamphlet, a copy of which remains in the Phila- 
delphia Library. 

Beyond elaborating and publishing a remarkably liberal, just, and 
worthy plan of government, the enterprise of the New Albion asso- 
ciates achieved nothing of note. Sir Edmund Plowden himself was 
the descendant of an eminent jurist; he was as unhappy in domestic life 
as unfortunate in business; his wife Mabel, daughter of Peter Mariner, 
of Wanstead, Hampshire, England, left him after a married life of 
twenty-five years, alleging abuse as her cause. Sir Edmund came to 
Virginia, and was at Erivvomeck, as Earl Palatine of Albion, in 1642, — 
"the fort given over by Captain Young and Master Evelyn," He was 
visited in London by some Marylanders in 1652, but he never left 
England again. Made poor by his outlay in behalf of his scheme of 
colonization, Plowden's fortunes became desperate; he was arrested for 
debt, and died in the debtors' prison in 1655. There is a pathos about 
the fate of the earnest Palatine of New Albion, which is made more 
effective by a statement of the social ideas by which he and his asso- 
ciates proposed to be governed. 

The pioneers of New Albion raised less tobacco and sold less rum 
for beaver-skins than their neighbors, but they were the first to com- 
prehend the vast width of the continent; and in evidence of their culture 
and character, they presented the world with an illustrious example of 
political sagacity in a model form of fiee and liberal government. 
While kings and ecclesiastics conspired in Europe to enslave the 
bodies and the souls of men, while Boston and New Haven fostered 
despotism, and called it theocracy, Roger Williams, divichng his land 
with all who needed, founded a state purely on the will of the majority, 
with God alone as the Ruler of Conscience; and Sir Edmund Plowden, 
beside the Delaware, sought to establish a more liberal, wise, and perfect 

3 



30 



SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 



organization of society than the world had ever known. Rhode Island 
became a more complete " Democracie," and fortunate Connecticut 
grew to love freedom by experience, but New Albion formulated the 
principles of political order, and put forward her ideal proposition, at 
once and entire. Of little consequence now are the " Manors, dignified 
by well chosen names, giving titles to each of the Earl's family"; of 
less account, the "Albion Knights of the Conversion of the Twenty- 
three Kings"; less still the mere ghost of an established church, 
barely provided for in a document which might have been quoted 
as the cleath warrant of state religions! 

Guarding against demagogue usurpation, the institution of New 
Albion enfranchised the people, and deferred to popular intelligence; 
obedient to British usages, it still insisted upon independence and 
freedom, and thereto obtained the sanction of the throne. Mildness, 
humanity, and justice were characteristics of the whole constitution of 
the intended state, and, most glorious of all, entire religious freedom 
was guaranteed; dissent was not amenable for punishment, and heresy 
to be proceeded against only by education ; with the proviso, that 
" t/iis argument or pcrsttasion in religion, ceremonies, or church discipline, 
should be acted in mildness, love, charity, a7id gentle language f 

§ As early as 1626, Gustavus Adolphus, the illustrious King of 
Sweden, the champion of Protestantism in his time, undertook to 
found a Swedish colony on the shores of the Delaware; this was first 
suggested to him by the same William Usselinx, of Holland, who in 
1590 proposed the Dutch West India Company to his countrymen. 
Usselinx waited upon Gustavus, and being a learned man, unusually 
well informed upon matters in America, he convinced the king and 
his nobles of the desirability of a Swedish-American colony, and of 
the feasibility of a great Swedish trading corporation to establish such 
a province. 

The company was organized duly, "to trade to Asia, Africa, and 
the Straits of Magellan," and on July 2d, 1626, the king issued an 
edict at Stockholm, " in which he offered to people of all conditions 
liberty of shares by subscription, according to their ability or inclina- 
tions. The proposal was received with general satisfaction," say the 
"Annals of the Swedes." Gustavus took for himself stock to the 
amount of four hundred thousand dollars, at equal risk. The king's 
mother, and Prince John Cassimir, his brother-in-law; the members 
of his majesty's council; many civil and military officers of high rank; 
the bishops and other clergymen; many merchants and citizens; 
country gentlemen and farmers, became subscribers; ships were fitted 
out, and all requisites for trade and a colony provided ; an admiral, 
vice-admiral, commissioners, merchants, and other proper persons were 
appointed, and a few vessels started for America. 

The Swedish cannon were the speakers and champions whose elo- 



CUSTAVUS, HIS CANNON AND COLONIES. 31 

quence clinched the arguments of the Lutheran Reformation, and 
recast the destinies of a thousand years ; but for Gustavus and his 
guns, the Protestant movement would have ended in the beginning. 
This hero king and philanthropist, whose mind was as practical as it 
was comprehensive and brilliant, who in defense of religious freedom 
invented and victoriously used modern artillery, was not inclined to 
hesitate in an enterprise which he declared to be " for the benefit of 
the persecuted," for the security of " the honor of the wives and 
daughters" of those made fugitives by war and bigotry, for "the 
good of the common man," for the blessing of " the whole Protestant 
world," and " the advantage of all oppressed Christendom," through 
undue deference to the dubious and conflicting claims of ambitious 
potentates, or the greed and avarice of monopolizing corporations. 

Neither was the King of Sweden careful, like the States General of 
Holland, to avoid direct responsibility for colonies. " Every inch a 
king," after the best manner of his times, his charter declared that 
" politics lie beyond the profession of merchants," and reserved the 
government of all future Swedish colonies to a Royal Council. Thus 
the formidable cannon of Sweden and the invincible sword of Gustavus 
were pledged to the protection of the emigrant. The privileges of the 
Swedish Compan)^ were open to all, and colonists were invited from 
every nation of Europe; slaves were discarded, as a laborious and 
intelligent Swedish population, with wives and children, it was wisely 
thought, would be quite as profitable and more to the honor of the 
state. In Sweden all was in readiness for the colony, when, through 
the influence of the papal power, war was provoked, and broke forth 
suddenly. Gustavus found himself compelled to invade Germany 
" to vindicate the rights of conscience," establish toleration, and se- 
cure German liberty by defending the principles of the Reformation. 
The fight was for the safety of Protestant Christendom. In the emer- 
gency the funds of the new trading company were, as a military 
necessity, diverted for a time to the purposes of war; yet the king 
abated not at all his zeal for the American enterprise even on the field 
and in camp, and from Nuremberg, October i6th, 1632, he communi- 
cated to Oxenstiern, his great minister, enlarged and most liberal plans 
for the proper setting of that "jewel of his kingdom," even in case of 
his death. 

At the battle of Lutzen, November 3d, 1632, Gustavus fell. His 
death changed the course of European politics; the project of Swedish 
colonies was temporarily postponed. The little squadron which left 
Sweden for America, perhaps on private account, about the time of the 
formation of the Swedish Commercial Company, as Swedish ships may 
have done before, was attacked at sea by Spaniards, some of the ships 
being captured; but there is reason to believe that others escaped and 
reached the Delaware, where their factors engaged in trade with the 



32 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

Indians, and that from that time there were always a few Swedes and 
Finns in the valley, who finally located among the aborigines, well up 
the river. 

Peter Minuit, finding partisan influence too strong for justice in the 
Dutch West India Company, visited Oxenstiern and the court of 
Sweden, and offered to conduct a Swedish colony to the unoccupied 
west shore of the Delaware. In the spring of 1638, a man-of-war, 
named the Key of Calmar, and a tender, the Griffin, from Gottenburg, 
Sweden, with about fifty emigrants, under command of Peter Minuit, 
as Governor by commission of Queen Christina, put in at Jamestown, 
Virginia, to " refresh with wood and water," being bound for Delaware 
Bay, which is the confines of Virginia and "New England," "to make a 
plantation." The Treasurer of Virginia desired to have a copy of 
Minuit's commission, but the Swedish Governor declined to show his 
charter, unless he could arrange for the purchase of tobacco for ship- 
ment to Sweden ; but the colonial laws of England did not permit such 
a traffic, and so Minuit, after spending ten days in the Chesapeake, 
pursued his voyage, and entered " Zuydt Baai" early in April. The 
Swedes soon after disembarked at Missipillion Point, twenty miles up 
the bay, on the western shore. 

Emigrating from an almost arctic climate, the Swedes were delighted 
by the Eden-like airs which, in April, are the atmosphere of the capes 
of Delaware, and which linger over them through the balmy summers. 
Enchanted with the climate, and charmed by the scene, they gave their 
landing-place the name of " Point Paradise." It may have been an ex- 
travagant appellation ; but as the lover of natural beauty sits quietly at 
Sea Grove, and sees the glorious summer sun sink amid his clouds, in 
the waters of the bay, above Henlopen and far-away Missipillion, he 
need not be a poet to imagine that the scene is somewhat too fair to 
be all of earth. 

§ When, in 1623, the French attempted to take possession of the Del- 
aware, they were prevented " by the Dutch settlers there ;" so, in 1635, 
the Dutch from Manhattan ousted the party of P^nglish under Holmes. 
In 1638 they were in the river, and equally ready to repel the Swedes. 
Soon after the Swedes arrived in the Delaware they were visited by 
some officials of the Dutch West India Company, who notified them 
of the claims of Holland thereabouts, and warned them out of the bay. 
The Swedes, in answer to this challenge, stated that they were on their 
way to one of the West India islands, and had put into Zuydt Baai 
but for refreshment after a prolonged and stormy voyage, which they 
should continue as soon as they supplied themselves with fresh meat, 
water, wood, and a few necessaries. Not inhospitable, the Dutch con- 
sented to this delay, trusting to the representations which had been 
made to them. 

But Minuit, who well understood the Dutch policy and the extent 



THE FIRST GARDEN IN DELA WARE. 



33 



of their jurisdiction, merely moved his expedition up stream, beyond 
the limits of that which had been Godyn and Blommaert's purchase in 
1629, and at Paghacking, or Minquas, Creek, near Wilmington, Dela- 
ware, made a second landing. There, from a local sachem, named 
Matteehoorn, a plantation was bought, " between six trees," " a kettle 
and a few trifles" being paid in consideration. The Swedes won Mat- 
teehoorn by the promise of the half of a crop of tobacco, to be raised 
on the ground he conveyed to them. Between Matteehoorn and the 
Swedes some document, memorandum, or deed was drawn up; "as no 
Swede could yet interpret Indian," and no Indian understand Swedish, 
the paper " was written in low Dutch." The Indians could /rc?<^ neither 
language, and were, it seems, induced to sign a deed of the land from 
Cape Henlopen to Trenton, or " Sankekan" Falls, and as far inland as 
the Swedes might gradually require, under the impression they were 
conveying a mere patch of ground to raise tobacco on " at halves." 
The Swedes, says Indian tradition, never divided the tobacco, but held 
the Indians to the letter of the fraudulent deed. 

The mouth of the Paghacking was but twenty-five miles from the 
Dutch Fort Nassau, and messengers were soon sent to learn Minuit's 
intentions; these he cajoled with courtesy and fine words, and they 
went back to their fort. In a few days the people of Fort Nassau came 
down again, and found the Swedes " had done more," — buildings were 
begun, goods disembarked, and a small garden made. The Dutch 
asking what it meant, Minuit made various excuses and pretenses, still 
declaring his intention to soon depart. As soon as the Swedish colony 
was safely established, Minuit revealed his purpose by sending his 
small vessel, the Griffin, up the river for Indian trade. She was not 
allowed to pass Fort Nassau, and Peter May, the sub-commissary, 
boarded her and demanded her commission. The Swedish master re- 
fused to show his papers, and defended the establishment of a Swedish 
colony on the Delaware, saying his queen had as good a right to 
build a fort there as the Dutch West India Company. Of all this the 
people at Fort Nassau took note, and at once forwarded the particulars 
to Manhattan. Director-General Kieft protested against the Swedish 
colony, and warned them to depart at once, as all that part of the 
world, especially the Delaware, belonged to the Hollanders, it having 
been for a long time " beset with forts and sealed with the blood of the 
Dutch." But the epistle had little influence with Minuit, and Kieft, 
who was as " economical" as he was " testy," was too prudent to attack 
the colony of a nation as gallant and victorious as the Swedes. 

There were but fifty souls in the first expedition under Minuit, and 
of these many were " bandits," condemned to penal servitude. Yet, 
notwithstanding the opposition from the Hollanders, the little colony 
"between six trees" was prosperous. On the north bank of the 
Paghacking, two miles from the Delaware, a fort was erected, and the 



34 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



name of Christina given to it and the creek, — the arms of Sweden 
being carved with the royal monogram on the boundary posts of the 
station. Besides, a plantation was made, where corn, beans, squashes, 
and the profitable tobacco, grew as they long had grown in the same 
region, except that they showed, by their unexampled productiveness, 
the difference between the bone paddle of the overtaxed squaw and the 
heavy steel mattock of the athletic Scandinavian. Not only were all 
the Indian products improved by Swedish culture, but the seeds of 
Europe were introduced, and soon made evident, by prolific increase, 
the proverbial fertility of the soil of Delaware and the influence of 
a genial climate. Meantime, commerce was not neglected; the goods 
brought for barter were soon disposed of, for the Swedes undersold the 
Dutch, and it is recorded that the beaver-skins taken to Sweden the 
first year of Minuit's administration damaged the Dutch trade on the 
Delaware more than thirty thousand guilders. 

About midsummer the vessels which brought the colony returned to 
Sweden, but Minuit and twenty-four men, with a good supply of mer- 
chandise and provisions, remained at Fort Christina. There was great 
delay in the coming of further supplies from Sweden, and in the win- 
ter of 1640 the Swedes were so much in want they decided to abandon 
their plantation, and merge themselves in the settlement at Manhattan. 
But early in the spring, the day before the Swedes had decided to give 
up Fort Christina, a ship named the Fredenburg, Captain Jacob Powel- 
son, of Utrecht, Holland, arrived with a company of Hollanders, who, 
under the Dutchman Joost De Bogaredt as a commander for Sweden, 
had been sent out by Henry Hockhammer, according to grant and 
agreement with the Swedish Government, to settle as Swedish colonists 
on the Delaware. The distress of the resident Swedes was relieved by 
De Bogaredt, and they continued at Fort Christina. Another colony 
was begun a few miles below, and soon the trade of the Dutch West 
India Company on the South River was " entirely ruined." 

In the fall of 1640 Peter Hollendare came from Gottenburg to Fort 
Christina as Deputy Governor of the Swedes in America ; two vessels 
soon followed, and "a new treaty was made with the Indians for 
more land." Tlie Swedes called their territory Nya Swerige, or New 
Sweden, and to Zuydt Riviere they gave the title of New Swedeland 
Stream. Nye Swerige was more foitunate than Swaanendael ; it had 
become a successful colony, — the first pcrvianent settlement on the 
Delaware. Minuit had proved a good guide and a sagacious, even if 
crafty, commandant; but his work was done. In 1641, according to 
Acrelius, the Swedish historian, he died at Fort Christina, while 
Peter Hollendare continued the government. 

The colonists of Virginia, as early as 1629, extended by Nathaniel 
Basse an invitation to such of the people of New PLngland as preferred 
a fertile soil and mild climate, to come and settle in the Valley of the 



jVEIV haven colony on the DELAWARE. 



35 



Delaware. The matter was discussed among the Puritans, but the first 
adventurers sent to the Delaware by them were from New Haven, in 
1638, the year that colony was founded. The traders of New Haven, 
George Lamberton and others, led the way. The project of emigra- 
tion was O'-iginated by a few enterprising persons, who soon formed a 
company that finally sold out its interest to the community at large, 
which, as a Church, desired to establish a mission among the Dela- 
wares, and found a prosperous colony where all should li\'e in godly 
order, and their children after them "should continue to abide under 
the wings of Christ." 

Captain Nathaniel Turner bought of the Indians, for ^^"30, the land 
along shore from Cape May to Raccoon Creek, Varcken's Kill, Hog 
Creek, or Salem River; the deed was dated November 24th, 1638. 
At different times during the next two years additional lands were 
purchased by and for the New Haven adventurers. They were helped 
in their negotiations by a refugee sachem of the Pequods, and repre- 
sented that their lands cost t'hem iJ"6oa in all. (A^. H. Col. Rcc) 

In April, 1641, an expedition of some twenty families, or sixty or 
more persons, sailed for the Delaware in Lamberton's bark, or ketch, 
under command of Robert Cogswf^ll. Vo\'aging by the way of Man- 
hattan, they were detained by Kieft ; but promising allegiance to the 
Dutch if they settled in Dutch territories, they were allowed to go on. 
The New Haven people landed on Varcken's Kill, near Salem, New 
Jersey, and " on the Schuylkill." Trading houses and habitations were 
erected on Varcken's Kill. The Schuylkill settlement was at or near 
Fort Eriwomeck, the headquarters of New Albion; the Dutch " Bevers- 
rede," the Indian Armenveruis, or Passyunk, at Philadelphia. These 
plantations were to be governed " in combination" with New Haven, 
and Captain Turner was furloughed from New Haven and authorized 
to go to the Delaware, "for his own advantage, and the public good in 
settling the affairs thereof." 

Tiiough the New Haven people were intruding upon territories 
claimed by both the Dutch and Swedes, yet such was the confusion of 
titles that their claim may have been supposed by them as good as 
any; besides, they found Sir Edmund Plowden in the bay, with an 
English grant of New Albion, and gave allegiance to him as Earl 
Palatine. Kieft, however, considered that Cogswell had purposely 
deceived him, and the Swedes were ready, as they had agreed, to co- 
operate to "keep out the English." In May, 1642, two sloops, the 
Real and Saint Martin, with thirty men, under Jan Janscn Van Ilpen- 
dam, of Fort Nassau, were sent by Kieft's orders to break up the 
English settlements on the Delaware. Fort pj-iwomeck was first 
visited ; there were some Marylanders at that place of the rougher 
sort, and accounts differ as to the result of Kieft's proclamation, which 
was read to them. One author asserts that the English were so 



36 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

violently blasphemous and threatening, that Jansen drew off his sloops 
and made the best of his way out of the Schuylkill ; but others declare 
the colony there was broken up. 

From the Schuylkill Jansen sailed to Varcken's Kill. There, meet- 
ing no resistance, he burned the English buildings, took possession 
of all the goods, and bore away most of the people as prisoners 
to Fort Amsterdam, at Manhattan. Their goods were restored to the 
New Haven people, and they proceeded home to Connecticut. The 
colony on Varcken's Kill had been very unfortunate ; the members had 
come on foot from Boston to New Haven, where they remained but a 
short time before moving to the Delaware ; the winter they spent on 
Varcken's Kill was excessively cold, and the summer had been very 
sickly ; their time, their trouble, the cost of their lands, all were lost, 
as well as damage done their goods. Still the undaunted Lamberton 
continued to trade in the Delaware from New Haven, though annoyed 
and interrupted at times; the New Haven people also attempted, 
though in vain, to renew their colony, being turned back at Manhattan. 
The records of New Haven for a few years show the public and private 
loss from the Delaware enterprise. The sufferers applied to the Com- 
missioners of New England, to Oliver Cromwell, to Richard, his son, 
and finally, to Nichols, — when he first came out, — for restitution at 
the expense of the Dutch. Their losses were more than a thousand 
pounds sterling, but, from one cause and another, nothing was ever 
realized by them in return. 

There was no original and permanent colony from New England on 
the Delaware until the whalemen, who first appear on record in 16S5, 
settled at Cape May. Although Plowden, who never had many men 
with him, had been unable to defend his earldom, or protect the people 
who recognized him as their lord, and although the colony was driven 
out to return no more, still members of the Calvinistic community 
were left behind, and the fame of the Delaware was spread abroad 
by the quarrels which followed. In the settlements of the following 
generation around the bay, the Yanokies (silent men), as the Mais 
Tchusaeg, or Massachusetts Indians, called the New Englanders, had 
their full share of action, influence, and honor, as is usual everywhere. 
Comparing a record of the early settlers of New Haven and Cape May, 
about one-fifth of the family names from the Cape May list arc inscribed 
on the older New Haven document. 

§ Peter HoUendare remained as the successor of Govcrner Minuit 
but eighteen months. On the 15th of February, 1643, after Hollen- 
dare's return to Sweden, Colonel John Printz arrived at Christina, and 
at once assumed office by virtue of his commission as Governor for 
the Queen of Sweden. Governor Printz came out in the ship Fame, 
attended by the Svan or Stork, and by the Charitas — all armed vessels. 
The instructions of the new Governor were full and explicit. About a 



PRE- HISTORIC RUINS IN NEW JERSEY. t^-j 

hundred soldiers came with hitn, as well as many colonists, the royal 
council having appropriated over two million dollars annually for the 
support of his administration. Printz was directed to keep on good 
terms with the Dutch and cultivate trade with the English of Virginia, 
and especially to see that the Indians were treated with consideration 
and justice, as the original owners of the soil. Still, the Swedes were 
to assume control of the Delaware, " that the river may be shut," and 
in case of aggression on the west side they were commanded to " repel 
force by force;" Printz was thus "to take care" of his jurisdiction. 
On Tenacong, now Tinicum Island, Printz built the fort. New Got- 
tenburg, of" vast logs," and erected Printz Hall for his residence. To 
shut up the river, a fort was built on Varcken's Kill, called Helsing- 
borg or Elsingburg; it had three angles, and mounted eight twelve- 
pound guns. 

The Rev. John Campanius, of Stockholm, came with Printz as 
chaplain; Reorus Torkillus had served in that capacity at Christina 
from the first. He died the 7th of September following the arrival 
of his colleague, being but thirty-five years old, still memorable as 
the first Lutheran missionary in the Delaware Valley, if not in all 
America. 

There is a well-authenticated tradition related by the Swedish 
botanist, Peter Kalm, in 1748, upon the authority of Moons Keen, 
one of the ancient Swedes, regarding Fort Helsingborg. When work 
was begun upon the fort, the builders found traces of ancient occu- 
pants in certain wells, which were bricked up to a depth of twenty 
feet or more under ground ; there were vessels and fragments of 
pottery, with broken and displaced brick also found near by, giving 
unmistakable evidence of the civilization of former residents. The 
situation of the wells and the position of the other relics was in a 
meadow near the river, where all the surroundings indicated the 
absolute antiquity of the pre-historic settlement. The Indians, who 
had occupied the ground for generations, had no knowledge or tradi- 
tion of people who dug wells and used bricks and pottery in a civilized 
manner, but assured the Swedes the relics had certainly been where 
they found them for more than a hundred and fifty years, — ever since 
the voyages of Columbus. Were these wells the work of Lief PLrik- 
son, and the Norwegian Christians, a.d. 996 to a.d. looo? Were 
they dug by the men who built the round tower at Newport? 

§ In October of 1643, the year Helsingborg was established, De 
Vries again visited South River, putting in as he was on his way to 
Virginia. As the craft came abreast of P'ort Helsingborg, a gun was 
fired for her to strike her flag and "come to." Blanck, the schipper, 
asked advice of De Vries. " If it were my ship I should not strike," 
said De Vries, " for I am a patroon of New Netherland, and the 
Swedes are mere intruders in our river." The schipper, however, 



38 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

" had a desire to trade," and lowered his colors. A boat came on 
board the vessel at once, and she sailed up to Tinicum that after- 
noon. The Dutch were welcomed to Fort Gottenburg by the Governor, 
who " was named Captain Printz, a man of brave size, who weighed 
over four hundred pounds." Being informed of the position of De 
Vries and his doings on the Delaware, Printz drank his health in "a 
great romer of Rhine wine." The Dutch traded confectionery and 
Madeira wine for beaver-skins at the fort for five days, and then 
visited Fort Nassau, where a garrison of Dutchmen was found. Re- 
turning to Tinicum, De Vries went with Printz to Fort Christina, 
" where there were now several houses," and spent the night with 
the Governor, who " treated him well." On parting from the Swedes 
the Rotterdam vessel fired a salute in honor of their hospitahty, and 
sailed away for Virginia. Thus De Vries, who forebore his vengeance 
upon the feeble Nanticokes, and ever counseled justice and peace in 
dealing with the bow-bearing Indians of Manhattan, was brave enough 
of himself to defy a battery of cannon in an unarmed vessel, and court- 
eous enough to- win the favor of a supposed enemy and competitor. 

Patroon De Vries spent the winter of 1643 in Virginia, and sailed 
from there for Holland, where he arrived in June, 1644. De Vries had 
given his best efforts for a dozen years to New Netherland, but the 
petulance of Hossett, the mismanagement of Van Twiller, and the stub- 
born folly of Kieft, had thwarted his sagacious endeavors, and to him 
the memory of his sojourn in the New World was a sad retrospect of 
losses and tragical disappointments ; he seems never to have revisited 
America. 

David Pietersen De Vries was one of the finest characters of New 
Netherland history. A man of the people, he was ever a foe to des- 
potism, injustice, and cruelty. In Manhattan, where he resided so long 
and honorably, he was, as Chairman of the Citizens' Committee, the 
acknowledged head of the Dutch democracy. The Indians trusted De 
Vries as a Swannekin " who never lied like the others," and his influ- 
ence with the aborigines, with his characteristic tact and discrimination, 
more than once saved the province from destruction. 

To the folly and mismanagement of Van Twiller De Vries opposed the 
coolness of practical sense and the courage of a hero. When the fool- 
hardy and barbarous Director Kieft ordered the massacre of his Indian 
refugee guests, De Vries gave earnest warning, and the revengeful ruin 
which followed came upon Manhattan despite the protest of the deitio- 
cratic leader. Firm and perhaps overbearing in maintaining his own 
rights as a citizen and privileged proprietor among his equals, even at 
the cannon's mouth, he forebore revenge upon the ignorant savage 
trespasser, and ever counseled and practiced honesty and humanity in 
all dealings with his Indian neighbors. Wise in council, prudent in 
action, De Varies stood firm for right, palliated the evils he could not 



TRANSLATION OF THE LUTHERAN CATECHISM. 



39 



avert, and constantly manifested that self-control and magnanimity 
which won the affection of the Indians from Fort Orange to Sandy 
Hook, and conciliated the barbarians of Swaanendael and Scheyichbi, 
making smooth and peaceful the ways of his successors on the Dela- 
ware. 

Though filling a merely subordinate position, De Varies was by nature 
and experience equally commendable as a man, a citizen, a commander, 
a diplomat, or a statesman. It would be untrue to history and unjust 
both to him and his creed not to record, in addition, the fact that the 
first resident patroon and owner of Cape May was a man of religious 
sentiments, in principle, after the best ideal, a devout and consistent 
Christian. 

§ On the i6th of May, 1648, the Rev. John Campanius returned to 
Sweden. He had been chaplain of New Sweden since the year 1642, 
and was a man of much earnestness and application. In addition to 
his duties as chaplain, Campanius kept a copious journal of his vo)'age 
to America and his observations in New Sweden. The Indians fre- 
quented the house of Campanius, who never wearied in discussing with 
them the tenets of his Church, and recorded that he found them able 
to comprehend the doctrines of his creed. Struck with the patience, 
aptness, and docility of his pupils, Campanius studied their language, 
and translated the Lutheran Catechism into the Lenni Lenape dialect 
of the Algonquin tongue. This book was printed by royal command 
at Stockholm, in Indian and Swedish, in 1696, in one volume, 160 
pages, i2mo; to the text a vocabulary is added, with examples, dia- 
logues, etc. 

There is a copy of this Swedish-Indian Lutheran Catechism in the 
possession of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and 
one was owned by Peter S. DuPonceau, LL.D., of the Pennsylvania 
Historical Society. Clay, in his Swedish Annals, suggests "that the 
Swedes may claim the honor of having been the first missionaries 
among the Indians, at least in Pennsylvania; and that, perhaps, the very 
first work translated into the Indian language in America was the 
translation of Luther's Catechism, by Campanius." 

Presumably, the author of the "Annals" refers to Protestant mission- 
aries ; for, not to mention the Spanish priests who came over even with 
Columbus, and soon made converts, the French Catholics at " Port 
Royal" (Annapolis, N. S.) began teaching the Micmacs and Abcnckis as 
early as 1605 ; and the Jesuits were there at public expense as mission- 
aries to the Indians in 161 1. De Saussaye founded the mission of 
St. Sauveur. on the Penobscot, in 161 3, which, in August of the same 
year, Argall, of Virginia, piratically destroyed. There was a mission 
to the Hurons by Brebeuf, Daniel, and Lallemand; the Jesuit " Fathers," 
in 1634, and an amply endowed Indians' hospital at Quebec, in 1635. 
A.n Indian seminary was founded at Quebec, with money and teachers, 



40 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



the same year, and about the time the Swedes came to "Zuydt River" 
an Ursuline convent school for Indians was established there," 

Five years before EHot preached to a tribe six miles from Boston, 
Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues, under Jesuit direction, penetrated 
in 1641 to the outlet of Lake Superior, and preached " Christ and him 
crucified" to a congregation of two thousand wild aborigines. " Not a 
cape was turned, nor a river entered," says Bancroft, "but a Jesuit led 
the way." Dissent is free, thank God ! Even dissent from dissent, at 
last; but history must crown with a just award those to whom, what- 
ever the dogma, the cross meant obedience, patience, and self-denial, — 
who bore the symbol of a divine humanity to savage men, and, in the 
speechless death-agony of Indian tortures, offered their cruel execu- 
tioners the sign of universal love, mercy, and forgiveness ! 

Campanius and Eliot began labor in the same field at about the same 
time, and though the work of Eliot was the greatest and most success- 
ful, the purpose was identical, and the honor due each is of the same 
nature. The Swedish chaplain acquired the " Renni Rennappi" lan- 
guage during the six years of his stay on the Delaware, but his trans- 
lation of the Lutheran Catechism was not put to press until 1696. 
Eliot began to preach in Indian October 28th, 1646, the Mohegan New 
Testament was printed in Boston in 1661, and the whole Bible two 
years later — fifteen years after Eliot began the translation. 

The printer's work on this Mohegan Bible — the first Bible published 
in America — was slowly done by an Englishman, and John Printer, an 
Indian youth. The work included a catechism, and the Psalms of David 
in Indian verse. Fifteen hundred copies were printed, at a cost of two 
thousand dollars ; several of them, richly bound, being presented to 
King Charles of England. " Eliot's Bible" may be seen in the Phila- 
delphia Library, in the library of Harvard College, and a few other like 
places : {q.\\ as these copies are, those who can read them are fewer still. 

To give an example of the difficulties encountered by Campanius in 
his translation, it is said that, as the Indians used no bread, he was 
compelled to translate the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day a plentiful 
supply of venison and corn." Eliot, in translating the Biblical account 
in which the mother of Sisera is described as looking through the 
"lattice," described a lattice to his Indian assistants, upon whom he 
was compelled to depend for a word: what must have been his chagrin 
to find, afterwards, that he had made "the mother of Sisera look out 
of the window through a wicker-basket trap for eels !" A thorough 
scholar like Eliot was needed to deal with the synthetical difficulties 
of a language in which, as no unconverted Indian knelt, the phraes 
" kneeling down unto him" is of necessity translated and printed 
Wutappessttukgussunnoohwehtunkguok ; yet l^liot translated several 
works into Mohegan, notably a Mohegan grammar, and an " Indian 
Logick Primer." 



THE PRAYING INDIANS. 



41 



It required the labor of years, says Loskiel, the Moravian mission- 
ary, to make the Delaware dialect capable of expressing abstract truth. 
A new language had to be forged out of existing terms, by circumlo- 
cutions and combinations. " Eliot caught the analogies of nature to 
convey moral truth in his Indian Bible." Each Indian tongue and 
dialect was a perfectly organized language, expressive of all material 
things, but there were few words to express aught else; no terms for 
continence, justice, gratitude, or holiness. It was impossible to trans- 
late the doxology into the purely synthetic, absolutely definite Indian 
tongue, and hence the Onondagas were taught to sing: "Glory be 
to our Father, and to His Son, and to Their Holy Ghost." Cotton 
Mather, who based his orthodoxy on witchcraft, gravely stated that he 
tested the demons around him, who made a pretense of being linguists, 
with the Indian tongue. These imps, Mather says, frequented his 
premises, and could well manage Latin, Hebrew, and Greek with ease, 
but at the Mohegan dialect they shrank back in dismay. The pleas- 
ing inference is that the Indians were a people unknown in hell ; but 
the cruel old witch-hunter did not tell the story as a compliment to 
the Mohegans, but honestly as a fact, — one worthy the most fortunate 
spiritualist. 

Both the Mohegans and Delawares were appreciative of the work 
done for them by their apostles and catechists. Eliot had three thou- 
sand six hundred praying Indians, whom he led like a flock, until 
King Philip's Indian war, when the men of Massachusetts, mad with 
terror and despair, turned upon even the inoffensive, praying Indians, 
broke up their unarmed civilized towns, and drove their innocent red 
fellow-Christians through suffering to foreign slavery. So perished the 
hope of John Eliot. The Swedish missionaries sent out by the King 
and Church of Sweden to the Delaware in 1696 wrote back: "The 
Indians and we are as one people. They are also very fond of learning 
the catechism, which has been printed in their language. They like to 
have it read to them, and they have engaged Mr. Charles Springer to 
teach their children to read it." And these same people protested 
alike to Swedes, Dutch, and English everywhere against the sale of 
rum to their young men. 

Few, if any, of the Indians of the Delaware became Christians in the 
time of Campanius, but afterwards, when broken as a tribe by contact 
with the whites, the Moravians became the kindly guardians of a part 
of their people, and many of them joined that church, and settled 
peacefully and prosperously at " Conestoga," only to be driven from 
their last home in Pennsylvania by the murderous " Paxton boys," who, 
coveting their land, killed many of them in 1762. Under the able 
leadership of their chief, the educated, pious Isaac Still, the remnant 
of the Delawares emigrated to the valley of the Wabash, " far away" 
then, as they desired to be, " from war and rum." The last party of 



42 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



about forty started in the fall of 1775. The great tribe had left the 
banks of the Poutaxit forever. In 1803 Hanna Hannah, last of the 
Lenapees in the east, died in Chester County. So passed away the 
peaceful, wise, and influential " original people." " In their dealings 
with the white man," says Colonel Wm. B. Sipes, in his sketch of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, " they were scrupulously honest, and many of 
them became strongly attached to the early settlers. The treaties they 
made, which cost them so much and profited them so little, were never 
broken, and when they had dwindled away, before the advancing tide 
of civilization, to a mere remnant of a mighty race, they \dX the burial 
places of their fathers in search of new homes without a stain upon 
their honor." 

Regretting that the limits of his work prohibit more extended recog- 
nition of the faithful Lenni Lenape, the author has chosen a word from 
their language to grace his title-page, " Scheyichbi" having been the 
ancient Indian name of New Jersey. 

§ The Swedes' Governor, John Printz, writes Governor Winthrop, of 
New England, in his history, " was a man very furious and passionate, 
cursing and swearing, and also reviling the P^nglish of New Haven 
as runnigates." The Swedish policy brought Printz into a series of 
quarrels with the Dutch of Fort Nassau, and they found no exemp- 
tion from his bad manners. For all that, the Governor of the Swedes 
was an able man, and not only managed well in the fur trade, but so 
overslaughed and undermined the power of the Dutch, that in 1649, 
about ten years after the settlement by Minuit at Paghacking, the 
Swedes were supreme on the Delaware. 

On the iith of May, 1647, Peter Stuyvesant succeeded Wilhelmus 
Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland. For several years 
affairs at Manhattan restrained and preoccupied him, but in 165 1 
decided measures were taken to reassert the claims of the Dutch 
on South River, where Stuyvesant proceeded in person. After un- 
satisfactory negotiations with Printz, the Dutch bought of certain 
Indians lands five miles below Fort Christina, and at Newcastle, 
Delaware, they built a fort which they called Kasimir, Fort Nassau 
being demolished. 

P'ailing to receive the reinforcements he demanded, Printz returned 
to Sweden, November 7th, 1653, leaving John Papegoia in charge of 
the colony. But Sweden had not forgotten her colony, but entrusted 
it to a "General College of Commerce," and in 1653 John Rising, 
Governor of New Sweden, in command of a strong military force, 
entered the Delaware, where there had been for some time less than 
a score of Swedish soldiers. Rising managed to gain possession of 
Fort Casimir without fighting, and at once fully rcstablished the power 
of Sweden, and soon concluded a just 'peace with the Indians. 

When Peter Stuyvesant learned of tlic " dishonorable surrender of 



CONQUEST OF NEW SWEDEN. 43 

the fort" made by Gerrit Bikker, and of his officers' desertion to tlie 
Swedes, with a third of his men, his rage was mighty, and he at once 
reported the affair to Amsterdam, where his anger was equaled by that 
of the directors. A Swedish ship, the Golden Shark, entering Man- 
hattan Bay soon after by mistake, was detained " until a reciprocal 
restitution shall have been made." Meantime, however. Rising wrote 
home an account of his success, saying that whereas he found but 
seventy persons in New Sweden, there were then three hundred and 
sixty-eight who acknowledged his authority, " including Hollanders 
and others." 

On Sunday, September 5th, 1655, "after the sermon," Peter Stuy- 
vesant, with seven powerful vessels and about seven hundred men, 
sailed from Manhattan, under orders from Amsterdam, for the sub- 
jugation of New Sweden. The next (Monday) afternoon the fleet 
was off Helsingborg, then in ruins; on the lOth of the month the 
Dutch forces landed near Casimir, which, being much overpowered, 
surrendered without defense. Rising shut himself up in Fort Christina, 
and, though closely invested from the 15th, held out until the 25th of 
September. The Swedish town having been sacked. New Sweden 
ravaged, and Christina invested by an overwhelming force, Rising, to 
avoid an exterminating bombardment, surrendered, and the flag of 
Sweden, which in defense'of freedom had waved victoriously in Europe, 
sank to rise no more in America. 

The Dutch forces were recalled to Manhattan in haste to repel an 
Indian invasion. The conquerers had been in New Sweden three 
weeks — a body of men twice the number of the entire Swedish popu- 
lation living on the country. Consequently, on the 1 8th of December, 
1655, when John Paul Jacquet arrived at Zuydt Riviere as Vice- 
Director for Stuyvesant, out of an original population of nearly four 
hundred but a dozen families remained, and, besides. Fort Casimir was 
no better than a ruin. On July 12th, 1656, the Dutch West India 
Company conceded the land from Boomtjes Hcuken to Cape Hen- 
lopen to Amsterdam, for seven hundred thousand guilders ($266,000); 
this territory became a colony of that municipality of Holland, under 
the name of Nieuwer Amstel, the capital being at the present New- 
castle. New Amstel was ruled with much rigor; to desert the colony 
was punishable with death, yet the numerous emigrants sent out by 
the city could not be retained. A trading post and small garrison 
were kept up at the Horekill, where in 1662 an Anabaptist " Men- 
nonist" community of twenty-five families settled under the leadership 
of Peter Cornelis Plockhoy. The Mennonists were a liberal, catholic, 
tolerant people, and their co-operative institutions were very free and 
democratic. For several years, owing to disagreements between the 
authorities of Manhattan and New Amstel, and between both of them 
and the Governors of Maryland, confusion and distress continued west 



44 



SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 



of the Delaware, and the dissatisfied people were scattered abroad by 
repeated alarms and panics. 

§ The glorious rise and progress of the Batavian Republic astonished 
the world; the commercial and manufacturing greatness of Holland 
aroused the bitter and ignoble jealousy of the English. In 1664, in a 
time of peace and progress, Eingland made a treacherous attack upon 
the Dutch. On the 8th of September, Manhattan and New Netherland 
were peaceably but unavoidably surrendered to a piratical expedition 
which Charles II. of England sent out to place his brother James, 
Duke of York, in possession of the province of the Hollanders. Sir 
Robert Carr was sent to take possession of the Delaware. Some de- 
fense was made at New Amstel by Hinoyssa the Governor; the place 
was captured, however, the Dutch soldiers sold into Virginian slavery, 
and the people plundered, even of their farms in some cases. A boat 
was sent to the Horekill and the colony there was robbed ; among the 
goods carried off was "what belonged to the Quaking Society of Plock- 
hoy, to a very naile." The court of England tried in vain to justify 
these acts before the world ; they merited the scorn of mankind. Nine 
years after, even Charles II. repented of his buccaneering; then Hol- 
land opened her dikes, and aided by the flood defeated two hundred 
thousand French troops with twenty thousand man; infinitely bold 
against desperate odds, the Dutch, at the same time, day after day 
outfought the fighting ships of Britain, until the shattered fleet, sailing 
as from an infernal scourge, hid behind the strongest forts, while the 
revengeful guns of De Ruyter and Tromp bellowed in insolent triumph 
along the shores of England. 

By the overthrow of the power of the Dutch West India Company 
and the States of Holland in North America, James, Duke of York, 
became Governor of Ne-w Netherland. Before tlie sailing of the expe- 
dition for the conquest of Manhattan, James appointed Nicolls, its 
commander, his deputy, to act as such after the subjugation of the 
Dutch colony. Nicolls had been gone from England but a month 
when, on the twenty-third of June, the Duke of York, well knowing 
the success of the enterprise was assured by the treachery which con- 
ceived it, sold to Lord John Berkeley, Privy Councillor and Baron of 
Stratton, and Sir George Carteret, of Sattrum, Devon County, Knight, 
a native of the Isle of Jersey, all the territory now included in the 
State of New Jersey, which then received the name of " New Jersey," 
or Nova Caesaria. James was one of the worst bigots of the I^nglish 
line of kings ; all his good qualities, as a man, a prince, a king, were 
foiled with glaring defects, yet in his honor the name of Manhattan was 
changed hy Nicolls to " New York," the west of the Hudson was called 
"Albania," and Long Island received the appellation of "Yorkshire;" 
thus all the various titles of the Duke were foisted upon the country 
at once — the force of flattery could no farther go. 



THE ADMINISTRA TION OF NICOLLS. 



45 



The flag of Britain now covered the coast of the Colonies which 
became the thirteen original United States ; freedom and progress were 
served by injustice in the end, but the people of New York, who 
imagined the privileges of Englishmen were to be added to the secure 
possession of their property, soon had reason to sigh for the honest 
despotism of Stuyvesant, to save them from the extortions of their new 
and rapacious governors; while the Duke of York and his agents 
were presently forced to realize in disappointment that the profitable 
despotism they had planned was impossible among such a people as 
those they fancied they had made their victims and servants. 

By his sale to Berkeley and Carteret, the Duke of York prefigured 
the outlines of the State of New Jersey, and unwittingly forecast the 
destiny of a free Commonwealth. The change of government which 
had made Colonel Nicolls Governor of New York and " Albania" and, 
as President of the Royal Commission, presumptive potentate of New 
England, was of vital importance to the people of the Colonies, especi- 
ally those near New York ; and the new administration, appreciative 
of its opportunities, was not slow to energetically assert its powers. 

The citizens of New Haven, who had paid six hundred pounds for 
lands on the Delaware, and perhaps lost as much more in fruitless 
expeditions thither, who had remonstrated with Kieft, quarreled with 
Stuyvesant, and sought the aid of Cromwell, through their General 
Court, by letter, detailed their grievances to the Royal Commissioners; 
but the new Governor was too busy to pause to nicely adjust the scales 
of justice. Ignoring the investitures of the past and the equities of 
the present, heedless of its own engagements, the government of New 
York devoted itself to the illegal profit of its officials and the assidu- 
ous and flattering service of its ducal patron. 

Governor Nicolls, in ignorance of the sale to Berkeley and Carteret, 
made more than two months before the capture of New Netherland, 
named New Jersey and the western bank of the Hudson Albania, 
in compliment to the Scottish title of the Duke of York. This ter- 
ritory he was exceedingly anxious to populate. Tracts of land on 
Hackensack Neck and elsewhere were granted to parties from New 
England, who, as required by Nicolls, satisfied the claims of the Indian 
residents. The Dutch, in 1663, had given a party of Puritans liberty 
to settle in " Nova Belgia" (New Jersey), with an almost independent 
charter for a local government, and the settlements under Nicolls 
were largely the outworking of similar plans by other " Yankee" asso- 
ciations. 

The pioneers from New Haven, and those who soon followed them 
from the east, brought to their new homes the same dogmatic temper 
and theocratic ideas which characterized the ecclesiastical tyrannies of 
early New P^ngland ; but with them they brought also the inflexible 
resolution and unceasing industry for which the people of that section 

4 



46 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

have ever been distinguished. The New Enghmd emigrants soon ac- 
quired the influence in New Jersey their pertinacious habits guaranteed 
from the first, and if the constitution and laws of the new Common- 
wealth were more favorable to liberty than the primitive enactments of 
M.issachusetts and Connecticut, it was not the fault of the conscien- 
tiously stubborn Puritans ! 

Wliile Nicolls by every means encouraged the settlement of Albania, 
and noted with pride the multiplying farms and increasing villages from 
Bergen to Sandy liook, news came that the action of the dull James 
of York had disparted his Colony, and conceded the fairest and most 
promising portion to overreaching speculators. In August, 1665, 
Philip Carteret entered New Jersey, and by virtue of the provision 
which, in English law, vested the Proprietary of a colony with juris- 
diction, assumed the office of Governor, under the warrant of his father 
and Lord Berkeley. 

Governor Nicolls was much vexed at the unexpected turn thus given 
affairs, and tried, but in vain, to induce the Duke of York to compel 
the reconveyance of the territories he had parted with in ignorance of 
their value. Berkeley and Carteret remained in possession and control, 
but it was a long time before the duke or his agents, who assumed to 
hold by feudal tenure, ceased to claim rightful jurisdiction, customs, 
rights, and paramount sovereignty under the King. 

The {t\<r settlers Philip Carteret found in his colony were well dis- 
posed to receive him as their Chief Magistrate, and when a subsequent 
Governor of New York invaded New Jersey to intimidate them by a dis- 
play of the Royal Patent, the sturdy Puritans, without question of the 
validity of the document presented, referred to Magna Charta as " the 
only rule, privilege, and joint safety of every free-born Englishman," 
and stood like a wall for the independence of New Jersey. The begin- 
ning of the Commonwealth was but small. On a tract of land once sold 
by the Indians to the Dutch, and afterwards to the Puritans, four 
houses stood in the same neighborhood ; in honor of Lady Carteret and 
her kindness, this locality was called Elizabethtown, and in May, 166S, 
became the scene of a Colonial Legislature and the capital of the 
Province. 

The property of Berkeley and Carteret was almost a wilderness ; to 
induce emigration its owners had sent successful messengers to New 
Maven to invite the rigid Calvinists to a home on their shores, while, 
at the same time, the most liberal concessions to liberty were promised 
whoever should join them in their invasion of the primeval woodlands. 

The Governor, the Council, and popular Representatives were to 
^create the laws, persons and property were to be secure, no ta.xes were 
to be levied but by the Colonial Assembly, both Propriet^^ries and 
people were to unite in maintenance of their mutual rights, even against 
royal imposition; and last and greatest of all, '"freedom of juelg.nent, 



AN ECONOMICAL HERESY. 



47 



conscience, and worship" were guaranteed every peaceable person. The 
power of veto, judicial appointments, and the executive authority were 
all which was reserved for the Proprietaries. The lands of the new 
State were to be held under a quit-rent of a half-penny an acre, the 
payment of which was deferred for five years, or until 1670; and to 
please the Royal Duke, who was President of the African Company, 
a bounty of seventy-five acres of land was offered for the importation 
of every able-bodied negro slave. 

As the Dutch patroons had done, settlers were required to base the 
title to their lands in equity, by a fair and satisfactory purchase of their 
estates from the Indians. 

The compact of New Jersey being ratified by the people, and peace 
prevailing under the mild sway of Philip Carteret, the province pros- 
pered and increased, encouraged by a temperate and salubrious climate, 
united with a fruitful soil easy of tillage; but in 16^0 the quit-rents 
became due, and then the Puritans, who, in New Haven, had Arthur 
Smith brought into Court in 1659, and fined fifty pounds, because he 
expressed some of the " divvilish oppinions" of the "cursed hercticks" 
the Quakers, developed a peculiar heresy of their own. Referring to 
their well-thumbed Bibles, from which they were apt to wrench a text 
to cover any purpose, they argued that Noah was the original proprietor 
of New Jersey, having in himself and heirs become invested with the 
same by his landing on Mount Ararat, directly after his protracted 
voyage in the ark. The title having thus been in Noah, as they argued, 
followed his descendants. The Indians were lineal offspring of Noah, 
they bought their lands of the Indians, and hence, particularly as Gov- 
ernor Nicolls had approved the deed and Carteret himself assented 
thereto, they refused rent which was merely due by the laws of Eng- 
land and their own voluntary contract and agreement. 

To save a few shillings, the Puritan farmers precipitated anarchy, 
drove Philip Carteret from his Governor's chair, and hunted William 
Pardon, who withheld the records from them, out of the country as if 
a malefactor. A new Governor was chosen by an irregular assembly 
of delegates, in the person of James Carteret, a trifling young man, an 
illegitimate son of Sir George; and while the legal Governor, leaving 
John Berry as his deputy, voyaged to England for fresh instructions 
and renewed authority, the revolutionists cultivated their farms in peace, 
kept the quit-rents in their pockets, and doubtless regarded Noah as a 
man who had left something very hand.some to his family. Great prin- 
ciples dawn slowly on the minds of men, and rightful independence and 
freedom are evolved, age after age, through the crimes of those who 
grope toward truth in selfishness and disorder. 

While toleration was established in New Jersey and the exercise of 
freedom urged to the license of revolution, Liberty was exiled from 
New York, and justice banished that corruption might prostitute the 



•48 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

offices of government. There was no popular representation, the Gov- 
ernor and his Council made the laws, decided causes, and assumed 
executive supremacy ; moreover, the functions of government were 
made means of extortion, and the people were plundered in the name 
of law and recurity. Contrary to the stipulations of the surrender, 
" Even the Dutch patents for land were held to require renewal, and 
Nicolls gathered a harvest of fees from exacting new title-deeds." 
That which had been New Sweden was retained under the government 
of New York, and shared the evils of an extortionate oppression, 
Governor Lovelace, who succeeded Nicolls in 1667, added to the trials 
of the people ; even the Swedes and Finns became turbulent. "The 
method for keeping the people in order is severity," said Lovelace, 
" and laying such taxes as may give them liberty for no thought but 
how to discharge them." Regardless of the liberties of New Jersey, 
arbitrary customs were collected at the mouth of the Delaware by the 
agents of the Duke of York. The people of Maryland invaded 
Lewestown with an armed force in 1672, to establish the domain of 
Lord Baltimore on the shores of the Delaware ; the country was at 
once reclaimed by Sir Robert Carr, deputy of Governor Lovelace, as 
belonging to the Duke of York by conquest. 

While all these things took place, the claims of Berkeley and Carteret 
were reaffirmed in England, and it seemed that trouble was impending 
for the New Jersey anti-renters ; suddenly the political kaleidoscope 
was shifted by an unexpected hand — Evertsen of Zeeland, command- 
ing a Dutch fleet, appeared in New York harbor, the 30th of July, 
1673 ; again without a blow Manhattan was surrendered, the flag of 
Holland waved once more over New Netherland. The unjust war 
upon Holland became unpopular in England, and Parliament refused 
supplies for its prosecution ; peace was declared on the 9th of February, 
1674, andthe rights of neutral flags were established by the treaty which 
followed, Holland under the teaching of Grotius having been the 
first to claim the enfranchisement of the ocean, the freedom of the seas. 
By treaty, too, England regained the port of New York, with the geo- 
graphical unity of her Colonies, and the flag of Holland, radiant with vic- 
tory and honor, was finally withdrawn from the shores of North America. 

Under Edmund Andros, the power of James of York was rein- 
stated at Manhattan, October 31, 1674. The narrow-minded duke had 
learned nothing from experience, and though Andros was a better man 
than Nicolls or Carr, yet the despotic system which oppressed the 
people of New York and clutched at the Charter of Connecticut re- 
mained. Philip Carteret reappeared in New Jersey, and renewed after 
a time his argumentative warfare for rights and dues according to feudal 
law and kingly pleasure, with a people who claimed to hold their lands 
from Noah, their privileges from Magna Charta, and their faith from 
private judgment of the infallible word of God. 



PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS. 49 

The Proprietaries of New Jersey sought above all things for profit 
from their province. Their liberal concession of popular rights was dic- 
tated by a policy which, however laudable in its means, looked to the 
same end gained by the piracies of Carr and the maladministration 
and extortion of Nicolls. Lord Berkeley was already an old man; as 
no profit had been derived from his New Jersey property, and trouble 
was still apprehended from contumacious subjects and disputatious 
tenants, he became willing to withdraw from the barren adventure. 

Where avarice falters in discouragement, and ambition halts in des- 
pair, the love of liberty populates the wilderness, and religious enthu- 
siasm builds the institutions of the State. From the time when Charles 
I. laid his head upon the block in front of his own banquet hall in 1649, 
the sufferings of " the peculiar people," the Quakers, had been indescrib- 
able and universal : whoever was tolerated they were disallowed ; they 
were contemned, insulted, fined, scourged, imprisoned, enslaved, 
maimed, branded, and hung, even in the New World. In England all 
classes united to persecute ; even the Presbyterians declared that " hell 
had broken loose" in the person of George Fox, and the mild apostle 
was forced to denounce them as " exceeding rude and develish." 
They were as poor sheep appointed to the slaughter, and as a people 
killed all day long." And yet, aside from the irregularities of a few 
fanatics, such as are found in all sects, the offense of the Quaker was 
only in his spirituality and his democracy. But in the days of Fox and 
Penn, these were counted worthy of stripes, bonds, and death, by those 
who worshiped Churches and Kings more than God ; and even those who 
contended to the uttermost for purity of soul, and the right of private 
judgment themselves, turned like wolves upon a people who gave to 
the Puritans' version of the rights of man a still more radical translation. 

Resolute to bear witness in testimony of the truth of the Inward 
Light, ready at all times to be offered up a sacrifice, the Quaker pre- 
served the serenity of his reason, whether he stood amid courts in the 
presence of kings as a Counselor and Friend, or perished from hunger, 
cold, and neglect amid the frozen filth of dungeons. He who "affirmed" 
himself the peer of peers, wore his hat as only a peer by law might do; the 

Friend" was ready with his " thee" and *' thou," and other titles he 
would have none; but "plain speech" was not impertinent language, 
and formal dress meant other things than eccentricities of character. 

Determined on freedom, the Friend was not bent on useless martyr- 
dom, and while Fo.x journeyed as a missionary, and Penn traveled as 
a preacher, the iconoclasts cast about for an asylum for the persecuted, 
a land where " Salem" might be founded, where " the Holy P^xperi- 
ment" might be tried, and, God willing, " Philadelphia" arise to wel- 
come to the " city of brotherly love" the universal tribe of man. Penn 
traversed Europe. Fox the colonies of America; nowhere was there to 
be found rest and peace, except perhaps in the narrow confines of 



50 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



Rhode Island. New Netherland turned aside from the policy of Fader- 
landt, and half tolerating Lutherans; Stuyvesant had only imprison- 
ment, labor in chains, and the dungeons of Fort Amsterdam for " the 
new, unheard-of, abominable heresy, called Quakers." 

At last light dawned from afar, and in New Jersey there was hope. 
Edward Byllinge, by John Fenvvick, as trustee for himself and his 
assigns, bought of Lord John Berkeley, in 1675, for a thousand pounds, 
one undivided half of New Jersey; under this indirect purchase mis- 
understandings arose, but they were managed by the arbitration of 
William Penn, to whom, with Gawen Laurie and Nicholas Lucas, Byllinge 
finally assigned his property for the benefit of his creditors. 

In June, 1675, Major John Fenwick, claiming his own right as an 
associate in the purchase with Byllinge, arrived in the Delaware in the 
ship Griffith, " with a large company and several families." The arbi- 
trators had assigned one-tenth of Byllinge's purchase to Fenwick, with 
a sum of money as his share ; he assumed the character and style of 
Lord Chief Proprietor. Near where the people of New Haven had 
settled on Varcken's Kill, not far from the site of the Swedish fort 
Helsingborg, and where the relics of unknown pioneers were found, the 
colony of " plain John Fenwick" also selected their location, and, feel- 
ing secure at last, landed upon the peaceful shores and bestowed the 
name of " Salem" upon the place. Byllinge had failed, and, in the 
interest of his creditors, the nine-tenths of one undivided half of New 
Jersey, left to his estate, was offered for sale in decimal shares of tenths 
and hundredths ; to carry out the purpose of an asylum for the perse- 
cuted, these shares were largely taken up by Quakers. 

To found his colony, John Fenwick had borrowed money of John 
Eldridge and Edmund Warner, giving his tenth of the Byllinge pur- 
chase as security, with the right to sell lands therefrom to their satis- 
faction. Eldridge and Warner conveyed their claim to the trustees, 
Laurie, Penn, and Lucas. Fenwick still asserted himself in all the 
qualities of Lord Chief Proprietor, refusing to abide by the results of 
aibitration. The rights and claims of P'enwick were a sore trial to 
Penn, and he and his associates have been accused of duplicity in re- 
gard to the matter, how justly or unjustly still seems a matter of dis- 
pute; however it may have been, Fenwick abode in his place, and as 
long as he lived gave token of an uncompromising and dauntless, even 
if, at times, impolitic and arbitrary spirit. 

As soon as the matter of ownership was adjusted, the Quakers se- 
cured from Carteret a division of the estate. Anxious to come into pos- 
session of their territory, where they could institute a government, the 
Friends haggled not for advantage, and Carteret, conscious of having 
the best of the bargain, readily fell in with their proposals. The line 
of division ran from I^gg Harbor to a point on the Delaware River, 
under the forty-first degree of north latitude, and near Burlington; the 



THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE: 



51 



lands to the north and east were to be left to Carteret, and those to the 
southward and west, under the name of West New Jersey, became 
the property of Quaker associates. 

Long accustomed to endure suffering, competent as critics and 
preachers, " the peculiar people" were now to be more severely tested ; 
they were required to build, to organize, to govern and enjoy. Con- 
sulting among themselves in England, the Friends evolved their scheme 
of government. " The Concessions are such as Friends approve of," 
wrote the Quaker Proprietaries to those already in their land of rest. 
"We lay a foundation for after-ages to understand their liberty as 
Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage, 
but by their own consent, for we put The Power in the People." 

The basis of the Quaker State was democratic equality ; methodically 
and clearly the "agreements" stated the sublime affirmations of the 
Quaker, and in harmony therewith promulgated the " fundamentals" 
of the highest form of actual government the world has ever known. 
Freedom of conscience, the ballot-box, equality before the law, the 
right of assembly, freedom of election, freedom of speech, freedom of 
the press, popular sovereignty, trial by jury, open courts, free legisla- 
tures, all these were provided for in West Jersey, in March, 1677. 
What more ? No poor man could be imprisoned for debt, none held 
as slaves; there was free access to the courts, where each man might 
plead for himself; the judge, an appointee of the assembly for two years 
only, merely announced the law, the jury gave both the verdict and 
the sentence; where Indians were concerned the natives were to make 
half the jurymen. The statutes prescribed were admirable and con- 
sonant with the Constitution, the whole wise, just, and discriminating, 
full of justice, benevolence, and protection even to the humblest deni- 
zen of the aboriginal woods. The helpless orphan became the ward 
of the State, and the child of misfortune was educated at the cost of the 
Commonwealth. 

The honor and fame of William Penn are borne toward future ages 
with the progress of the mighty State that bears his name; but, let it 
be remen)bered, in West Jersey his inspired mind and benevolent heart 
first wrought out his model of a state, and there, and there alone, his 
will and his purpose became the law and rule of a ha[)py people. 
Every acre of New Jersey has been fairly bought of the Indian tribes. 
West Jersey is unstained by Indian blood. " You are our brothers," 
said the sachems ; " we will live like brothers with you. 1 he path 
shall be plain ; there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the feet." 
" Their ways were ways of pleasantness, and all their patiis were 
peace." 

The " holy experiment" had been established, and thus far was success- 
ful ; troubles and trials came at length, but new precedents met novel 
emergencies, and staid historians who describe the time break forth 



52 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

in poetic rhapsody to tell of the happiness of the people. " The people 
rejoiced under the reign of God." " Everything went well in West 
New Jersey." 

Meantime, the trustees of Sir George Carteret grew tired of Colonial 
burdens and trials without return, and proposed the sale of East New 
Jersey. The estate was purchased by William Penn and eleven others, 
the first and second days of February, 1682, for three thousand four 
hundred pounds; possession was taken in November, 1682, by Deputy 
Governor Thomas Rudyard, for the Association. New Jersey was now 
entirely in the possession of Friends, but in East Jersey were found a 
large number of " sober professing people" of the Calvinist persuasion, 
and sound policy seemed to require a more varied board of propri- 
etaries. Accordingly, each Friend selected a partner, and, to the 
twenty-four, a new patent was issued by the Duke of York. The King 
also confirmed all the transactions by declaration in November, 1683. 
The partners were not all Quakers, but one of them, who was a Friend, 
the able Robert Barclay, of Urie. Scotland, was made Governor, and 
afterwards became Governor for life. 

While important events thus followed each other in New Jersey, 
William Penn secured his grant of Pennsylvania, and, late in the 
autumn of 1682, he held a meeting at Shackamaxon to which the 
Indians of Pennsylvania were invited, and where the spirit moved Penn 
to preach a Quaker sermon, — the same gospel George Fox announced 
to Cromwell, and which Mary F'isher delivered among the armies of 
the Turks and bore to the Sultan, " Commander of the P'aithful." 
"We are all one flesh and blood," said Penn. "We will live in love 
with William Penn and his children as long as the moon and the sun 
shall endure," answered the "savages;" and they kept their word, and 
long treasured the tradition of that day's speech from Onias, the great 
Father of the Qhckcls. Says Bancroft, " Not a drop of Quaker blood 
was ever shed by an Indian." 

But the affairs of Pennsylvania became too vast for personal super- 
intendence, and the agents of Penn in the purchase of lands, in making 
of treaties, often forgot his gospel and disregarded the wishes of his 
gentle soul. In time "the world's people" rolled in on Pennsylvania 
like a flood ; professing obedience to Biblical law, and denouncing 
"vengeance on the heathen," they themselves selfishly trampled on all 
law, human and divine, and, under the hypocrite's cloak of zeal for the 
glory of God. defied the rights of Penn and his assigns, overrode the 
laws of the Province, intruded without warrant upon the lands of the 
tribes, and imbrued their hands in the blood of the Indian with every 
circumstance of base atrocity, even to those who knelt at the name of 
Jesus and shared with the Moravian saints the bread and wine of the 
Christian Sacrament. In 1682, Penn promised the Indians, " No advan- 
tage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love." 



THE CRUEL POLICY OF THE STUARTS. 



53 



In 1685, the agents of Penn shamefully defrauded the tribes of their 
lands to the Susquehanna, and, in 1764, John and Richard Penn, the 
sons of '' Father Onias," sanctioned Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader's 
offer of one hundred and fifty dollars for the scalp of an Indian, and 
one hundred and thirty-four dollars for scalps which bore the hair of a 
squaw! The Pennsylvania Quakers, many of them, labored faithfully 
and not in vain in the cause of justice and mercy, as they had light, 
but the student who seeks the logical issue of the principles of Fox 
and Penn starts back in grief and horror from the blood-stained soil of 
Pennsylvania, to follow the record of events east of the Delaware. 

Theological predestination means political democracy. Quakerism 
is the democracy intended, and yet predestination alone separates the 
Friend and the Calvinist. " The nearer the relation, the worse the 
quarrel," and in all the weary years, from George Fox, in 1649, to the 
death of Charles II., in 1685, Presbyterians in England were the perse- 
cutors of PViends ; and in Massachusetts the Puritans ordered that the 
ears of the Quakers be cut off, and their tongues bored with a red-hot 
iron. They were Calvinists who, in Boston, in 1659, put Marmaduke 
Stephenson, William Robinson, and William Leddra to death on the 
gallows for preaching Quakerism in Massachusetts, and hung Mary 
Dyar on Boston Common, the same year, for the same offense ! 

Cromwell died, the Stuarts were restored, Charles II. reigned for the 
quarter of a century; the zealous fanaticism of the Calvinist Round- 
heads was succeeded by the superstition of the divine right of kings, the 
last deepened by the excesses of the first. Monarchy was absolute in 
church and state in the last days of Charles 11., "Independents" were 
marked for destruction, and " Presbyterians," — they who since the time 
of Edward VI. had originated each struggle for popular freedom, they 
who always dreamed of republics, whose creed taught insubordination 
as a dogma, — what had they to expect? It was in Scotland that the 
policy of the Stuarts bore its ripest fruit; there the crime of Cromwell 
in the execution of King Charles I. was ten thousand times revenged. 
Of the Cameronians, of the Covenanters, of the Scottish Presbyterians, 
what can be said? Nothing exceeded the cruelty, the brutality, the 
mad, exterminating barbarity visited upon them, except, forever, the 
fortitude with which they confronted those who slew them ! The 
magistrates of Boston, in 1659. were tender nursing mothers — angels of 
mercy — compared to Claverhouse and Lauderdale and Jeffreys, the 
minions of episcopacy and the king. 

Atrocity incited insurrection, but the adherents of Monmouth were 
borne down, and the penalties of treason superadded to the inflictions 
of persecution. All who had ever communed with rebels were con- 
demned ; twenty thousand lives awaited the executioner, safe only in 
the forbearance of the informers. In the name of law, the common 
dragoons, the rank and file of the soldiery, were made magistrates and 



54 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

judges over families of rank and wealth and women of culture, as well as 
the peasantry of the mountains. The discretion of the ruffians themselves 
furnished the instructions of this banditti, but royal mercy moderated 
their rigor. Summary murder was forbidden, and women were to be 
allowed to die without dishonor; no other restriction was imposed. 
To whom, among the bloodhounds of vengance, should a maiden make 
her complaint of outrage, and when have the dead returned to convict 
their assassins ? 

There was not room in jail for all the Covenanters; the prisoners 
were sold into plantation slavery, and the price of blood shared by 
royal favorites. Presbyterians were hunted like vermin, with dogs and 
guns, by mounted men led on by swarming spies ; it was death to 
house them, death to throw them bread, death to listen to complaints 
of theirs ; did a wife, a husband, a father, a child, a parent, comfort their 
own kind, death was the doom of both the sufferer and the friend. It 
was more than human nature could endure, and the bewildered, de- 
spairing victims of an infernal crusade turned at bay and threatened 
retaliation. Such is the courage of the hunted, bleating ewe, when 
bloody wolves rage round the mangled flock. The threat of resistance 
was answered by the order for massacre. As they labored, as they 
prayed, as they journeyed, as they fled, the Covenanters were shot 
down; their estates were plundered, their houses burned, their families 
hurried away to distant colonies. 

James II. came to the throne; he only added the aggravation of a 
delusive pretense of clemency to the miseries of the people. The 
victims of cruelty sought in flight safety from death; every day com- 
panies of fugitives were arrested by the troops ; juries of soldiers trying 
them beside the highways, they were condemned in a body and shot 
in heaps together. Beside the sea women were tied to stakes at ebb 
of tide, flir out upon the strand; the pitiless tide returned by slow 
degrees, and, mocked by the ribaldry of the troops, who laughed at the 
amusing spectacle, they were gradually and agonizingly drowned. The 
dungeons were crowded with men ; for food, for water, for air, they 
prayed in vain; starved, choked with thirst, or suffocated, they died in 
breathless torture. But the Government of England was not merciless. 
When the dungeons would hold no more, living or dead ; when the 
assassin tired of murder; when only suspicion indicated a victim ; when 
a whim suggestec] forbearance, then shipload after shipload, in crowds 
the wretched, plundered, ill-provided e.xiles were sold and exported 
to America. Still monarchy and episcopacy laid their hands upon 
them as they left their native land; some of the men were allowed to 
retain a single ear, but others were deprived of both, while upon the 
cheeks of fair women and matrons the branding-iron was often deeply 
set, while a royal mandate crossed the Atlantic to forbid mercy or 
mitigation of their slavery. 



THE TEACHING OF THE INWARD LIGHT. 



55 



Now how might the Quaker exult in liis happy home between the 
Delaware and the sea, and, secure in the immunities of his own freedom, 
reflect that the Lord had revenged his wrongs upon those who had 
joined with the multitude to do him evil ! Had the Friend been other 
than " friendly," now was the time to satiate his malice, for the groans 
of his tormentors were in his ears, his eyes witnessed the full measure 
of their suffering. 

But what revenge may men take to whom the Inward Light dic- 
tates a rule of action ? During the reign of Charles II., James, then 
Duke of York, was the friend of Admiral Penn, and, just before the 
admiral's death, pledged him the same regard for William Penn, his 
son. When the duke came to the throne as James II., William Penn 
had great influence. The king, a bigoted Roman Catholic himself, 
stood in need of toleration in PIngland, where the Established Church, 
though persecuting the Covenanters to the death, hated Romanism 
more. The Papist king persecuted Protestant dissenters to win the 
political favor of the Church of England. The plea of Penn was for 
toleration, not for himself alone, but for all ; he averted persecution 
from Roman Catholics on the one hand, and restrained as far as in him 
lay the storm of rage which overwhelmed the Presbyterians. He was 
accused of Jesuitism, popery, and treason in consequence, and, though 
disproving every charge, became suspected by men of all parties be- 
cause he was active in defense of the common rights of each. 

When Penn moved in the purchase of New Jersey, it was not merely 
as an asylum for Friends, but to provide a home for all who suffered 
for conscience. No sooner was New Jersey under Quaker control 
than a fair and reasonable description of it was published, and an 
account of its free and tolerant institutions forwarded therewith to 
Scotland. The Quaker founded a State in freedom, and made it the 
home and asylum of those who had deprived him of liberty and life. 
And this was the revenge of the men with broad-brimmed hats, who 
" theed and thoud" alike the plowboy and the monarch. To be true 
to principle regardless of persons, to resist not evil, but return good 
for evil, — such has been the teaching of the Inward Light. In Judea 
or New Jersey the gospel was the same : " Do good unto them who 
despitefuUy use you." Well had the Quaker heeded the teacher, and 
well had he comprehended the lesson ! 

Convinced of the purpose of the Government of England "to sup- 
press Presbyterian principles altogether," and perceiving that " the 
'whole force-of the law of this kingdom is (was) leveled at the effectual 
bearing them down," the ruined Scotch Presbyterians, in whose souls 
a sense of duty to God forbade conformity to human assumptions, were 
ready, as soon as the way opened, to abandon even "bonnie Scotland," 
since apostasy alone could ransom their lives in their native land. A 
number of Scottish Covenanters arrived in East Jersey in 16S2. 



56 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

George Scot, of Pitlochie, was a leader among the emigrants. " A re- 
treat, where by law a toleration is allowed," said he to his neighbors 
and fellow-suffering countrymen, " doth at present offer itself in Amer- 
ica, and is no where else to be found in his Majesty's dominions." 
To America, to East New Jersey, came George Scot and family, and 
about two hundred others, in 1685. During the following year, after 
the Duke of Argyle had been put to death under mere pretense of 
law. Lord Neill Campbell, the brother of the murdered nobleman, be- 
came, by purchase from Sir George Mackenzie, one of the Proprietors 
of East New Jersey. Lord Campbell sent over a large number of set- 
tlers, and, coming himself for a time, acted for some months as the 
Chief Magistrate. Lord Campbell was succeeded in office by Alex- 
ander Hamilton; the power of the Proprietaries was inconsiderable. 
Monarchy had no call to the New World, there it existed only by 
its feudal shadaw; feudalism was already outworn in Europe, and of 
the outworn shadow Proprietary Government " was that shadow's 
shade." 

But what need of thrones, of nobles, of titles, of cumbrous institu- 
tions to this people? They who held themselves as sons of God, co- 
heirs with Clirist; whose glory was foreordained in the eternal coun- 
cils of the Almighty, and their names written in the " Lamb's Book of 
Life," from the foundation of the world — the elect, the redeemed, the 
sanctified, the persevering saints ; the children of the Covenant ! 
Virtue, education, courage, experience, they had them all ; religion in- 
spired them, the love of liberty controlled them ; nature gave them 
the harbors of Scotland, the fertility of PLngland, and the climate of 
France ; with the forests, the game, the fish, the fruits, and the freedom 
of America, beside the " curious clear water" which flowed in abun- 
dant brooks and rivulets along the healthful vales of New Jersey. The 
ocean rolled between them and persecution, between them and every 
hostile tribe abode peaceful Quakers, who practiced a blessed white 
magic upon the wildmen, and transformed them to philanthropists. 
There was a world of room, great flocks of sheep pastured beside the 
roads of imperial width, and troops of horses fit to mount the squad- 
rons of a king bred and multiplied uncared for in the woods. Not 
thus grew the many children of the Scottish Calvinists, as in New 
England free schools were soon provided for, and education and moral 
training cared for the coming generation. 

Indians, Puritans, Quakers, and Covenanters held in peace and uni- 
versal prosperity the soil of New Jersey. Toleration is a narrow word: 
they met on the broad platform of equal rights, of judgment, and 
mutual union for the common weal and wealth. America welcomed 
every sect, predominant bigotry became impossible. The pioneers of 
New Jersey were strong souls with varied thoughts ; there moderate 
counsel has prevailed, and seeking to preserve the rights of each, the 



PRIMITIVE GOVERNMENT IN NEW JERSEY. cy 

people have maintained the noblest freedom, and fostered the prosperity 
and happiness of all. 

James II., fickle and inconsistent in everything but personal selfish- 
ness and the greed for arbitrary power, had no sooner reached the 
throne than he undertook to make the colonies " more dependent." 
In New York the honest advice of Penn, which was demanded in 
1682 by the duke, won for that State her "charter of liberties," but 
James, as king, trampled upon his engagements as duke ; tyranny 
returned in New York, and the Proprietaries of New Jersey were 
compelled to surrender their rights of jurisdiction. Sovereignty over 
New Jersey was merged in the crown in 1688. P"or three years 
after 1689 East New Jersey had "no government whatever." For 
twelve years the whole of the province was without settled administra- 
tion or recognized Governors. The Proprietors, anxious to preserve 
the forms of law, tried in vain to exercise a power they had renounced, 
but, divided among themselves, they but divided the people, the courts 
and tlie records shared the confusion, politicians puslied their disagree- 
ments, but the virtue of the people preserved society. 

The crimes of James II. against the Dissenters failed to secure for 
him, as a Papist monarch, the alliance of the Church of England; in 
revenge, he proclaimed equal franchises to every sect ; toleration was 
to weaken the episcopacy, and reconcile the English to Rome; it 
brought William of Orange to the throne of Britain, in 1688, and drove 
James II. into poverty and exile. The advent of William was a great 
revolution in England: it secured toleration for all Protestants, and 
established the rights of the subject on the basis of English law. 

When, in 1702, Queen Anne came to reign, matters in New Jersey 
were still unsettled, the law officers of the crown questioned the selfish 
arrangements of those who had for gain bought out original Proprie- 
taries, and Parliament threatened interference in a province " where no 
regular government had ever been established." The Proprietaries, to 
avoid litigation which might have endangered their ownership of land 
as well as their pretended rights as Governors, surrendered their claims 
to jurisdiction, unreservedly, before the Privy Council of England, 
April 17, 1702. As simple owners of land, the Proprietaries managed 
to retain their full rights, and became merged in the landholders of the 
province, their titles descending unimpaired to their assigns and heirs. 
After the surrender of the Proprietary, the whole of New Jersey was 
governed by a royal Governor, it never again obtained a charter ; power 
was monopolized by officers under royal instructions, and toleration 
denied Papists; "no printing-press might be kept," or any publication 
made without license ; meantime, the traffic " in merchantable negroes " 
was stimulated by every means in the power of the provincial govern- 
ment, under instructions from the throne. Thus the power of monarchy 
found the refugees in the forest ; but Quakers, Puritans, and Presby- 



58 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

terians united in a stubborn, able, and yet orderly struggle for former 
freedom. Peacefully but sternly the debate had begun, to end in 
making New Jersey a sovereign state, in an independent confederacy. 

The disputes as to jurisdiction, titles, etc., between the Duke of York 
and the proprietors of West Jersey — the trustees of Edward R}'llinge — 
were decided by Sir William Jones, in 1680, in favor of the proprietors ; 
but the duke, in his new patent, unwarrantably made Byllinge heredi- 
tary Governor. The nomination was unprovided for in the constitution 
of West Jersey, but to avoid further trouble a precedent was made, and 
B)-llinge elected ; he, however, continued in London, liaving little in- 
fluence in the province. 

In 1687, Byllinge died, and Doctor Daniel Coxe, of London, him- 
self a principal West Jersey proprietor, bought the claims of the heirs 
of the Governor, and undertook to organize a government, by adopting 
the constitution of England in place of the original Quaker Conces- 
sions. Near Town Bank, Cape May, on Co.xehall Creek, Dr. Coxe 
built "Coxe Hall" for a residence; on the draft of a primitive survey, 
made in 1691, the edifice appears, adorned with a tower or spire, quite 
in contrast with the original cluster of whalemen's cottages, not far 
away. The above-mentioned survey was made by John VVorlidge and 
John Budd, who, coming down from Burlington, laid off ninety-five 
thousand acres of land in Cape May County for Dr. Coxe. The 
people were not inclined to co-operate with the new Governor in his 
designs, and he labored in vain to establish the feudalism of England 
on the shores of the Delaware; still he continued to speculate in Indian 
lands, and a few of the original settlers of Cape May secured their 
estates directly from his agents. 

Dr. Coxe was a man of vast enterprise and unbounded yet not un- 
reasonable ambition, and was concerned in the attempt to found an 
English province in Louisiana, which was rendered futile b}' French 
pre-occupation. In 1692, the " West Jersey Society," an organization 
of forty-eight persons combined for the purpose, bought of Dr. Coxe, 
on the 20th of January, the whole of his claims to lands and jurisdic- 
tion, paying therefor the sum of nine thousand pounds sterling. The 
Society put their newly acquired lands in market, in tracts to suit, at 
moderate rates, much to the public benefit; as they sold \x\ fee simple, 
independent landlords and small farmers became numerous, and the 
foundation of a democratic state was laid in a freeholding population. 

§ Prominent in geographical position, remarkable in its natural feat- 
ures, and especially fortunate in climate, Cape May attracted the notice of 
the earliest navigators of the adjacent seas, and was soon celebrated by 
the explorer and naturalist. In 1 64 1, the site of Sea Grove or its vicinity 
was referred to as a promontory, and Campanius wrote of dangerous 
shoals off Cape May, no longer in existence. Whatever improvements 
natural causes have made in the mouth of the Delaware, the sands have 



EARLY HISTORY OF CAPE MAY. 



59 



been piled over against Henlopen, and with the shoals have gone the 
dunes, or beaches, which made the point a promontory. 

The historian of Cape May finds no records of white men before 
1685 ; then Caleb Carman was appointed Justice of the Peace, and 
Jonathan Pyne made Constable by the Assembly of New Jersey, thus 
indicating a pre-existing population. Cape May was cut off from the 
north by vast, dense, impassable cedar-swamps, extending from the 
sea-shore to the bay, and must, in prehistoric days, have been a wild 
and almost inaccessible place. The earliest known inhabitants of Cape 
May were, of course, Indians, and, according to Captain Samuel Argall, 
in 1610 they were numerous. As a fishing station, the cape may have 
been occupied at any time for the last three hundred years, and the 
pirate and slave-hunter preceded even the fishermen. 

The history of the Delaware valley indicates clearly that the first 
residents of Cape May were refugees, — persons who, to escape servi- 
tude, oppression, or debt, domiciled in the wilderness. The Swedes, 
who sometimes visited the cape for eggs and to kill geese, solely for 
their feathers, had in their colony men bound to penal slavery ; some 
of them became fugitives among the Indians. When, in 1642, the New 
Haven colony on Varcken's Kill was broken up, some of its members 
remained on the Delaware, and subsequently New England vessels 
harbored at Cape May, fishing and trading for furs, — an illicit business 
for them in the judgment of the Dutch and Swedes, One such vessel 
was robbed and her crew murdered by the Nanticokes, near Swaanen- 
dael, in the spring of 1644. She had spent the winter at Cape May, 
and went over for beaver-skins. From New Sweden, from New Am- 
stel, from the colony at the Horekill, as may be recalled, varied causes 
at different times scattered the people ; most of them fled to Maryland, 
many crossed into New Jersey, and some, doubtless, reached Cape May. 

In his " Early History of Cape May County," Maurice 13eesley, 
M.D., referring to the probabilities of prehistoric settlement, writes : 
" It would seem probable, inasmuch as many of the old Swedish 
names as recorded in Campanius, from Rudman, are still to be found 
in Cumberland and Cape May, that some of the veritable Swedes of 
Tinicum or Christiana might have strayed or have been driven to our 
shores. When the Dutch Governor, Stuyvesant, ascended the Dela- 
ware in 1654(5), with his seven ships and seven hundred men, and sub- 
jected the Swedes to his dominion, it would be easy to imagine in their 
mortification and ch.igrin at a defeat so bloodless and unexpected, that 
many of them should fly from the arbitrary sway of their rulers, and 
seek an asylum where they could be free to act for themselves without 
restraint or coercion from the stubbornness of Mynheer, whose victory, 
though easily obtained, was permanent, as the provincial power of New 
Sweden had perished forever." 

Pieter Heyser began whaling in Delaware Bay in 1630. When it 



6o SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

became a regular business at Town Bank is uncertain ; there was a 
fisherman's colony there from New Haven and Long Island of consid- 
erable numbers, and living in houses, before 1691 : outstaying the 
whales, they took up farms, resorted to other pursuits, made themselves 
homes, and founded some of the best families in New Jersey. The 
first account of a visit to Cape May was published in a " Description 
of New Albion," written by Sir Edmund Plowden, under the name of 
" Beauchamp Plantagenet," which appeared in London in 1648. Plow- 
den reproduced a letter from Lieutenant Robert Evelyn. " Master 
Evelyn" left England with an expedition for the Delaware in 1634, and 
probably made his exploration of the cape soon after. Others had 
observed Cape May, — Hudson in 1609; Argall, 1610; Cornelius Hen- 
dricksen, 1616; Dermer, 1619; Cornelius Jacobsen, May ( 1614?), 1620; 
Hossett and Heyes, 1630, and De Vries in 1631 ; besides a party of 
eight, sent to explore the bay, in 1632, by Governor Harvey, of Vir- 
ginia, who were killed by Indians. 

Cape May County was instituted the 12th of November, 1692. 
There were five members of Assembly allowed it ; the next year a 
quarterly court, for cases not exceeding twenty pounds, was decreed 
by the Assembly of New Jersey. The first court was held at " Ports- 
mouth" (Cape May Town, or Town Bank), on the 20th of March, 1693. 
The Grand Jury having been charged, found " it necessary that a road 
be laid out, most convenient for the King and county; and," said they, 
" so far as one county goeth, we are willing to clear a road for travelers 
to pass," as if the guardians of the county saw, prophetically, how 
much their district was to owe its future growth and prosperity to the 
appreciative health- or pleasure-seeking traveler. The tax levied in 
1693 was forty pounds sterling, with the considerate proviso that pro- 
duce should be taken at " money price" in payment. One of the first 
acts of the court was an order that " no one shall sell liquor without a 
license," the traffic and use of rum having already, as usual, been the 
cause of much trouble. 

Of the settlers at Cape May in 1685, and of those who came for some 
fifteen years after, the majority were attracted by the whale fishery in 
the bay of Delaware. It is shown by reliable records, that whaling 
was the business of Christopher " Leamyeng", and his son Thomas, of 
Caesar Hoskins, Samuel Mathews, Jonathan Osborne, Nathaniel Short, 
Cornelius Skcllinks, Henry Stites, Thomas Hand and his sons Jolin and 
George, John and Caleb Carman, John Shaw, Thomas Miller, William 
Stillwell, Humphrey Hewes, William Mason, John Richardson, Ebene- 
zer Swain, Henry Young, and many others. In looking over the 
colonial records of New Haven, in the first years of its existence, the 
reader meets most of these family names, and the Long Island whale- 
men were of the same stock. The same names are found to day on 
the books of New England ships; they are people of Newport, of 



LAND TITLES AND NATURAL PRIVILEGES. 6 1 

Nantucket, of New Bedford, and New London ; the world liad no such 
dauntless mariners as the whalemen of New England and Ca[)e May. 

The purchase of the rights of Dr. Coxe being made in 1692, the 
West Jersey Society, as proprietors, to prevent confusion, nominated 
Andrew Hamilton, the former deputy of Governor Barclay, to be Gov- 
ernor. The people at large acquiesced, and the General Assembly of 
New Jersey passed an act to cure all defects in law and practice. The 
law officers of the crown, however, refused their sanction to such legis- 
lation, and the lords of trade claimed New Jersey as a royal province. 
The basis of government continued unsettled, and. in 1/02, the New 
Jersey proprietors surrendering their claim of jurisdiction, as has been 
noted, continued to hold their lands under the Royal Governor, Edward 
Hyde, the weak, yet arrogant, " Lord Cornbury." 

Much of the difficulty in establishing government in New Jersey 
arose from the factious opposition of parties who wished to avoid the 
payment of quitrents, and prevent adverse decisions against their in- 
sufficient invalid land titles. Not altogether wrong in equity, perhaps, 
these persons still evaded the courts, and by their interested captious- 
ncss defeated the plans of moderate men, did wrong to their neighbors, 
and kept the province in a chaotic state, until it lost its charter, and 
passed under the shadow of arbitrary power. In Cape May County 
there was little dispute about titles to land; Coxe held most of the soil, 
though but five sales were made by his agent George Taylor. The 
West Jersey Society continued the sale of lands for sixty-four years, 
and by 1756 had disposed of most of their estate. Doctor Johnson, 
of Perth Amboy, was the principal agent of the Society at the time, 
and Jacob Spicer (2d), in a negotiation in which the wine-bottle is 
said to have betrayed Johnson into forgetful ness of his employers' 
interests, bought the remainder for the insufficient sum of £,100\ at 
his death, Johnson, seemingly conscious of his unfaithfulness, Ictt the 
Society a thousand pounds conscience-money. 

By English feudal law the West Jersey Society became, through their 
purchase from Coxe, invested with a monopoly of the natural privi- 
leges of Cdpe May: none could legally fish or hunt without their con- 
sent ; the deeds given by the Society did not convey these natural 
privileges, and much anxiety was felt about the matter in time, al- 
though the Society prohibited none from oysters, fish, or game. An 
organization was created in 1752 to secure the natural privileges for 
public use, but delay occurring, Spicer forestalled their action by his 
jolly bargain with Doctor Johnson, and by so doing provoked a 
quarrel with his neighbors, which was discussed in a public meeting 
at the Presbyterian meeting-house, March 26th, 1761. The foUowhig 
June, Spicer, who never sought to prevent his neighbors from using 
" the natural privileges," offered to sell his whole landed estate in the 
county, excepting his farm at Cold Spring Neck, and the natural 

5 



ez SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

privile^res, except a riglit for his family in the same, to the people of 
the county for £'jooo, but his offer was declined. " I was willing," 
wrote he, " to please the people, and at the same time do my posterity 
justice, and steer clear of reflection." 

It must have been an unpleasant affair for Spicer to be at variance 
with the people whose representative he had been for seventeen years. 
An active man of exemplary habits and comprehensive mind, Spicer 
was twenty-one years in the assembly, being first elected in 1744: he 
was appointed by the legislature one of the commission which met in 
1758 at Crosswicks, and then at Easton, to extinguish by special treaty 
the Indian title to lands in the State. By the work of this convention 
New Jersey gained the title of "the great doer of justice" from the 
Delaware tribe of the Lenni Lenape. 

Jacob Spicer (2d) dying in 1765, his son Jacob conveyed the natural 
privileges to a corporation organized by the legislature; thus feudal 
rights were recognized; besides, an East Jersey court gave a decision 
in favor of the rights of the proprietors; an appeal was taken, however, 
to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the verdict below 
reversed, and the State made the proprietor of the privileges of the 
water for the use of the whole people. Thus the last trace of feu- 
dalism disappeared, and the visitor enjoys the sports of Cape May, 
thoughtless of the " natural privileges" about which so much un- 
availing pother was made so long ago. 

§The earliest historical settlement in Cape May County was that of 
the whalemen at " Town Bank," a bluff the visitor at Sea Grove can see, 
as part of an unequaled view, from the observatory over the Pavilion. 
From the tower Town Bank is the highest ground in sight, lying some 
four miles away due north, and on the shore of the bay. Before 1700, 
most of the land taken up was in that vicinity. The marine taste and 
habits of the people coming afterwards are attested by the fact that 
they settled altogether along the bay or sea, heedless of the quality of 
the soil. 

It is only within the last generation that the inland portions of West 
Jersey have attracted the attention its resources justify; the unexampled 
growth of such a town as Vineland, within less than a score of years, 
is an indication of the results of enterprise in that region ; still, the 
Jersey shore will have its share of residents, especially in summer, for 
reasons which are palpable to all who observe them from one of the 
beautiful sail-boats, which the tourist always finds near Sea Grove, 
" well kept, ataunto, spruce, and gay," awaiting his pleasure. 

The waters of Cape May are magnificent for varied sailing. The 
sounds are as smooth and placid as a garden pool; there the most timid 
may venture, cruising without a fear, yet the sea breeze sweeps across 
them, damp with the spray of the adjoining breakers, and the voyage 
may be extended all the day. 



OLD-TIME TRAVEL AND COMMERCE. 63 

For the many " not afraid in a boat," the bay and roadstead are a safe 
and free expanse of pleasant waters ; while those who love the breeze, 
the blilow, and the spray, in all their ocean sublimity, have before them 
the broad Altantic, clear of reef or island for three thousand miles to 
" the far-off Azores," and beyond for hundreds of leagues to Lisbon, 
Portugal, and old Spain. 

As late as 1706, the only routes from Cape May to Burlington were 
by the river, and over bridle-paths which led hither and thither across 
and through the forests, swamps, and marshes. Thomas Chalkley, an 
English Friend, rode from Cohansey to Cape May, 2nd month, 1726, 
" through a miry, boggy way, in which we saw no house for about forty 
miles, except at the ferry;" "that night," says his journal, "we got to 
Richard Townsend's, at Cape May, where we were kindly received." 
At Townsend's, at Rebecca Garretson's, at John Page's, at Aaron Leam- 
ing's, Chalkley held satisfactory meetings ; he stopped two nights with 
his wife's brother, Jacob Spicer, and journeyed to Egg Harbor. " We 
swam our horses," wrote he, " over Egg Harbor River, and went over 
ourselves in canoes." The difficulties of travel may have been one 
reason why the people of Cape May chose Peter Fretwell, a Quaker 
resident of Burlington, to represent them in the assembly in 1702, 
and for twelve years after ; it seems a strange proceeding any way, but 
all New Jersey was full of odd political devices in the early days. 

As early as 1698, Richard Harvo, of Cape May. owned a sloop ; and 
in 1705, Captain Jacob Spicer sailed the sloop Adventure of sixteen 
tons, John and Richard Townsend, owners, as a packet between Cape 
May, Philadelphia, and Burlington, under a license from Lord Corn- 
bury. In 1706, another sloop, named the Necessity, was built and 
owned at Cape May by Dennis Lynch, from which time the marine 
increased until in fifty years there were numerous small vessels trading 
from Cape May County to Oyster Bay, Long Island, to Rhode Island 
and Connecticut, and to Philadelphia. The vessels going east generally 
carried lumber, while oysters and produce of various kinds found a 
market up the river. Jacob Spicer (2d) owned a vessel he sent to the 
West Indies, and he shipped much corn taken by him in barter for gen- 
eral merchandise. In 1750, the Delaware pilot-boats were pinked stern 
boats, sharp at both ends; a usual size was twenty-seven feet keel and 
eleven feet beam; the "pinkie" was the lineal progeny of the "whale 
boat," and, when in familiar hands, one of the stanchest craft that ever 
rode a wave. 

It is easy to imagine the slow but yet actual improvement in the 
means of transportation around and from Cape May; but it was not 
until 1852 that change amounting to a revolution took place in the 
means of travel. In that year Captain Wilmon Whilldin put the first 
steamboat on the route between Cape May and Philadelphia. Though 
regarded almost as a miracle, the boat was a modest craft compared to 



64 



SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 



those which glide along the Delaware now; "the longest day in June" 
was almost too brief for her to make the trip from the Cape to the city, 
running " between sun and sun." But other boats were soon put on 
the route, which reduced the time of travel while enlarging the accom- 
modation. There are few finer trips than that down the lovely Dela- 
ware; the land disappears at last as the mid-waters of the bay are 
crossed, and Sea Grove comes in view, often from a deck that reels 
merrily beneath the feet of the voyager. For those to whom even the 
bracing air of the bay has no charms, unless inhaled from the shore, 
there has been provided another line of travel. 

The West Jersey Railroad was completed to Cape May in 1866, and 
since then each year has added to the excellence of the road itself, while 
the time consumed in the journey has been reduced to the minimum 
consistent with safety. Cars of the most complete construction and 
luxurious finish are run, including Woodruff's Silver Palace Drawing- 
room Coaches, and a degree of care and courtesy is evinced by all en- 
gaged in train-service, which render the journey of only two hours and 
a half or less from Philadelphia to the " City by the Sea" as pleasant as 
human skill can make it. 

Unfavorable as the country above Cape May was for travel, there 
was one circumstance of the early days which tended to make transit 
by water an occasion for apprehension, and rendered the worst " miry, 
boggy way" preferable to a route whereon the voyager had reason to 
look under every strange sail for the sinister visage of the sea-robber 
and pirate! The sixteenth century was an age of piracy, and as late 
as 1 72 1 the Delaware was the scene of captures by the highwaymen 
of the ocean. Owing to its lack of naval and military strength, and to 
the reluctance of the Quakers to hang rascals, Philadelphia was a 
favorite place with Blackbeard and others of his kind, and the Dela- 
ware was chosen as a resort for repairs by many an outlaw vessel. In 
173 1, five men were hung as pirates, which was about the end of a 
bad bloody business in this part of the world. The pirates are said 
to have infested Sea Grove, and buried much money there, after which 
much digging and conjuring has been done, even in recent years. 

Although most of the early inhabitants of Cape May were sea- 
faring men, the Swedes among them were an agricultural people, and 
in time circumstances compelled the general cultivation of the soil. 
The colonies, near the close of the sixteenth century, were governed 
by the English lords of trade; every effort was made to prohibit 
manufactures and commerce in America. Still, whatever the wrongs 
of government, the natural resources of Cape May saved the settle- 
ment there from want. Parliament could not legislate the fish out of 
the Delaware, no lord of trade ever ate such oysters as fairly obstructed 
the sounds, no English park had half the game which swarmed in the 
woods and swamps, there was an abundance of wonderfully quick, 



AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY. 



65 



fertile soil, easy of cultivation, and the sun never shone, ev^cn on an 
English king, as it beamed on the gardens and cornfields which, year 
by year, grew ever wider and still wider. 

The primitive manufactures of Cape May, aside from lumber, were 
of a domestic nature, and were much encouraged by Jacob Spicer 
(2d) ; there was hardly anything that he would not take in exchange 
for goods. He advertised to receive, at the same time, a variety of 
produce, from a drove of cattle or sheep, " a thousand pounds of 
woolen stockings" for the army, or " a large quantity of mittens," to 
" a clam-shell formed in wampum, a yarn-thrum, a goose-quill, a horse- 
hair, a hog's-bristle, or a grain of mustard-seed, being," said he, 
" greatly desirous to encourage industry, as it is one of the most prin- 
cipal expediertts, under the favor of Heaven, that can revive our droop- 
ing circumstances at this time of uncommon, but great and general 
burden." This was in 1756, during the French and Indian War, — the 
conflict wherein the colonists learned to " organize victory," and gained 
the confidence which made possible the triumph of the Revolution. 

Cape May was fortunate in her early sons. Jacob Spicer (2d) was a 
statesman, a merchant, an economist; a man without conceit, he 
required in his own family the same reasonable diligence and thrift he 
recommended to others. There were twelve persons in his household, 
and such was his minutely systematic way of business that from his 
books and writings may be learned, even now, the details of their life. 
In Jacob Spicer's own house, under the superintendence of a tailor, 
tailoress, and shoemaker, the apparel of his family was made. The 
sons of this legislator and jurist were taught to cobble shoes, the 
girls to make clothing and knit. The Spicer boys, in 1757, were pro- 
vided with " 24 lbs. gray skin, (^ 25d. per lb." to make them breeches 
and vests. This was deer-skin, and some of it was worn with the hair 
on. For the girls there was a provision of " striped linnen" and " lin- 
sey ;" there was " a cloth vest" for one of the boys, and a " tammy 
quilt for Judith." Spicer estimated the girls to knit yearly, besides the 
other work they had to do, two hundred and twenty pairs of mittens, 
taking forty-four pounds of wool, to be spun by a hired woman in his 
house, in forty-four days. The mittens were worth " i6d." (thirty-two 
cents) a pair at Cape May when finished, but sold at double the money 
at " York" and Albany. In one way and another, the premises of the 
Hon. Jacob Spicer must have been a lively place. Teetotalism had 
not been heard of at Cape May then, and under the head of " wets," 
the master of the house charges his family with using " 52 gal. rum, 
10 do. wine, and 2 bbls. cyder." As a merchant and magistrate, Spicer 
probably entertained many, and, in the unquestioned manner of his 
time, took care to " welcome the coming, speed the parting, guest." 

The patient author, as he delves among these prosaic records of the 
past in the magnificent Centennial year of grace, 1876, remembers the 



66 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

scandals of his day, and pauses to heave a sigh, not for the leather 
breeches, linsey-woolsey, woolen mittens, rum and cider, of the 
Spicers, but for more of the conscientious good sense which made 
virtue, diligence, and economy the height of fashion, public spirit 
the pride of the citizen, and inflexible integrity the historical glory of 
the merchant and magistrate ! 

But with all the usefulness and sterling worth of Jacob Spicer (2d) 
notwithstanding he was for twenty-one years — nearly half his days — 
an officer and representative of his neighbors, still Aaron Leaming (2d), 
was the man the people of Cape May especially delighted to honor. 
He served them as their representative for thirty years : well educated 
for the times, of great natural good sense, very industrious, and, withal, 
somewhat aristocratic, no man was ever more highly honored by the 
county, and none, perhaps, better deserved the regard and confidence 
of his constituents. Neither Leaming nor Spicer were place-hunters, 
dependent upon local prejudice for recognition. Serving as colleagues 
in the assembly for a score of years or more, their ability and fidelity 
were made manifest, and together they were selected by the legisla- 
ture for the responsible work of compiling the laws of the State. This 
they completed to the satisfaction of the public, and " Leaming and 
Spicer's Collection" is, to-day, a respected authority in New Jersey. 
Leaming was a great speculator in land, and yet found time to write 
copious " Memoirs," which remain a faithful transcript of the times in 
which he lived. Born in 17 16, the son of Aaron Leamyeng, from 
Connecticut, a man who had worked his way against adverse circum- 
stances to superior knowledge, large possessions, a Quaker faith, and 
public respect, Aaron Leaming (2d) maintained the honor of his family, 
filled with credit and dignity the important position assigned him, and 
died, much regretted, in 1783. 

The Leamings, Goldens, Spicers, Stites, Stillwells, Willetts, Ludlams, 
Causons, Hands, Townsends, Youngs, Swains, Hughes, Garretsons, 
Hubbards, Mackeys, Godfreys, Reeves, and Weldons, Whilldens, or 
Whilldins, with others, were among the early and principal settlers of 
Cape May. 

While history records the virtues of the early sons of the Cape, their 
prominence in seamanship, in commerce, in the halls of legislation, 
what shall be said of the women of the place and time ? Theirs may 
have been a less conspicuous position, but many of them were of that 
class whose " children rise up and call them blessed ;" diverse, yet equal, 
in domestic life they were accomplished in all good works, nor are we 
left without evidence of a bright intelligence, in many cases, to more 
endear them. Very early, the Quakers did much jn West Jersey to 
modify and elevate the estimate of woman. In the library of Sarah 
Hall, of Salem and AUoway's Creek, Aaron Leaming the elder, as a 
boy, "very poor, helpless, and friendless," reacf law; the aged Quaker 



THE MITTEN ARTICLE. 



6/ 



lady being herself "an eminent lawyer for those times." The student 
may fumble in vain among the dry leaves of court records, account 
books, and scattered memoranda, for the chronicle of great deeds by 
the mothers of Cape May; but while "like sire like son" has become 
a proverb, do we not know that the mother is equally the parent of the 
child, and that the men who have done honor to their native county 
learned, like Washington, their noblest lessons beside a mother's knee? 

In an estimate of the resources, income, and expenditure of Cape 
May County, for 1 75 8, made by Jacob Spicer (2nd), there is credit 
given the county for production of the "mitten article," to the value of 
five hundred pounds sterling. The manner in which the mitten trade, 
which, as thus appears, was quite a reward to the female industry of the 
County, was encouraged, is related in the following letter from Dr. 
Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan, dated Passy, July 26th, 1748, "on the 
benefits and evils of luxury:" 

" The skipper of the shallop, employed between Cape May and Phila- 
delphia, had done us some service, for which he refused to be paid. My 
wife understanding he had a daughter, sent her a present of a new 
fashioned cap. Three years afterward, this skipper being at my house 
with an old farmer of Cape May, his passenger, he mentioned the cap 
and how much his daughter had been pleased with it; ' but,' said he, ' it 
proved a dear cap to our congregation.' How so ? ' When my daugh- 
ter appeared with it at meeting, it was so much admired that all the 
girls resolved to get such caps from Philadelphia, and my wife and I 
computed that the whole would not have cost less than one hundred 
pounds.' ' True,' said the farmer, ' but you do not tell all the story. I 
think the cap was nevertheless an advantage to us, for it was the first 
thing that put our girls upon knitting worsted mittens for sale at Phila- 
delphia, that they might have wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons 
there, and you know that that industry has continued, and is likely to 
continue and increase to a much greater value, and answer better pur- 
poses.' Upon the whole I was more reconciled to this little piece of 
luxury, since not only the girls were made happier by having fine caps, 
but Philadelphians by the supply of warm mittens." 

The old times were trying times; hardly were the pioneers of Cape 
May settled in comparative comfort, before the entire country was 
plunged in the horrors of the French and Indian wars. Surrounded by 
the faithful Lenni Lenape, Cape May had no experience of the ruthless 
barbarities which were suffered elsewhere, but for many a year no one 
could tell when some French cruiser or Spanish privateer would break 
into the Delaware, and retaliate upon its defenseless shores the outrages 
Argall had imposed upon the French Acadians in 1613. New Jersey 
always cheerfully and with alacrity met the requisitions upon her for 
men and means; while the soldiers of Cape May faced a cruel foe, 
Jacob Spicer rallied the people to increased industry; " to meet the great 



68 SCHEYICIIBI AND THE STRAND. 

demands of the time," he demanded "a thousand pounds of stockings," 
"for our men in the field ;" faster than ever rolled the spinning-wheel, 
faster still flew the needles ; even before the Revolution Cape May 
evinced a patriotic courage. 

On the 1st of November, 1775, Jacob Spicer called a public meeting, 
*'to do something for the country," but had to record his chagrin that 
only James Whillden, Jeremiah Hand, Thomas Leaming, and John 
Leonard attended. It was the era of doubt ; the magic word. Inde- 
pendence, had not yet been uttered at Philadelphia, — the more honor to 
the ready few. Cape May sent Jesse Hand to Burlington as member 
of the Provincial Congress in 1775 and 1776. On the 2ist of June, in 
the latter year, that body decided upon the formation of a new State 
Government. Hand was also a member of Council in 1 779, and for 
three years afterward. Jesse Hand, Jacob Eldridge, and Matthew 
Whillden were the delegates sent from Cape May to attend the Con- 
vention at Trenton, on the second Tuesday of December, 1 787, to ratify 
the Constitution of the United States ; this was done by a unanimous 
vote on the 19th of the month, when the members of the Convention 
marched in solemn procession to the Court-House, where the act of 
ratification was publicly read. New Jersey was the third State to ratify 
the Constitution of the United States. By the Legislature of New 
Jersey Jesse Hand was made a member of the Committee of Public 
Safety, a most responsible and arduous position, but no one of those 
who served the cause of Independence, in a civil capacity, deserved 
better of his country. 

Cape May has been noted for generations, as from natural causes, one 
of the best of beaches; the same peculiarities constitute it one of*the 
most delightful driving places imaginable. Unequaled by nature, the 
beach road has been extended along shore, over Poverty Beach, away 
past the magnificent Cape May Lighthouse, past the beautiful cottages 
and comfortable hotels of Sea Grove, beyond the United States Signal 
Station, around the point, and for a perfect mile up the Delaware to 
the steamboat landing; from thence the straight inland road runs for 
three miles, over the turnpike, into Cape May City. Wherever the 
start be made, the seven miles round brings the rider to his door again. 
Hoof or wheel, it is the same good road, and all the way the ocean or 
the bay is constantly in view, and the surf can scarcely stir unheard. 

But what have all these well-known facts to do with Jesse Hand and 
his offenses, he of ante-revolutionary fame? Well, the simple fact is, 
that gentleman and patriot utterly confounded, astonished, and dis- 
gusted his neighbors by his audacity in presuming to ride over the very 
route we have described, and others thereabout : the first man in the 
history of the world to traverse the roads and beaches of Cape May 
in the [)retcntious dignity and effeminate luxury of a top carriage. It 
was none of your modern affairs from Kimball, Brewster, or Rogers, 



A TALE OF LOVE AND DEVOTION. 



69 



but a solid, old-fashioned " chair," heavy enough, hard-riding enough ; 
but what of that? Had not Aaron Learning traveled on horseback to 
the Legislature ? Had not everybody else ridden in horse carts year 
after year? And now Jesse Hand presumed upon a new and amazing 
fashion before their wondering eyes. History records no popular 
tumult, except of tongues, about the matter, but Jesse Hand never fully 
regained the regard of some people, and jealousy and distrust, like a 
curse, followed his new-fangled equipage; and though he and his gen- 
eration are long since dead, yet the writer hath knowledge of traditions 
that, still drawn by attenuated and discouraged equines, a very Wander- 
ing Jew of vehicles, Jesse Hand's carriage still peregrinates, at a toilsome 
pace, the interminable, sandy, woodland roads of Jersey. 

As to the part which Cape May took in the Revolution, Dr. Maurice 
Beesley, in his " Early History of Cape May," writes as follows : " In 
the contest of our forefathers for independence, nothing praiseworthy 
can be said of the other counties of the State that would not apply to 
Cape May. She was ever ready to meet the demands made upon her 
by the Legislature and the necessities of the times, whether that de- 
mand was for money or men. Being exposed, in having a lengthened 
water frontier, to the attacks and incursions of the enemy, it was neces- 
sary to keep in readiness a flotilla of boats and privateers, which were 
owned, armed, and manned by the people, and were successful in de- 
fending the coast against the British as well as refugees. Many prizes 
and prisoners were taken which stand announced in the papers of the 
day as creditable to the parties concerned. Acts of valor and daring 
might be related of this band of boatmen, which would not discredit 
the name of a Somers, or brush a laurel from the brow of their com- 
patriots in arms. The women were formed into committees for the 
purpose of preparing clothing for the army, and acts of chivalry and 
fortitude were performed by them which were equally worthy of their 
fame and the cause they served. To record a single deserving act 
would do injustice to a part, and to give a place to all who signalized 
themselves would swell this sketch beyond its prescribed limits." Yet, 
on another page, the doctor cannot forbear telling the story of the de- 
votion of Sarah, the sister of Captain Nicholas Still well, the young 
Mrs. Griffing. Captain Moses Griffing being a prisoner on the infa- 
mous and murderous " New Jersey Frisson Ship," where the dying, the 
dead, the famished and famishing were promiscuously huddled together, 
Mrs. Griffing, "actuated by a heroism which woman's love alone can 
inspire," bravely made her way for a hundred and fifty miles through 
a most dangerous country, swarming with enemies, romantically re- 
solved to see and rescue him, or die in the attempt. The devoted wife 
called at the camp of Washington by the way, who gave her in charge 
an English captain to exchange; she reached New York in safety, and 
finally persuaded Sir Henry Clinton to release her husband ; the ex- 



70 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



change was made, after a long and painful suspense, and the patriotic 
wife enjoyed the happiness she deserved. 

And thus the men and women of " the time that tried men's souls" 
fought the battle of English liberty on the soil of America; aivi to-day 
the citizen of Britain may find in the extent and stability of his free- 
dom abundant reason to rejoice in the result of a contest which, begin- 
ning in the colonies as successful revolution, culminated in the mother 
country in the achievements of liberal and progressive reform. 

Notwithstanding the perturbations of war, or the changing policies of 
peace. Cape May prospered, and gradually enlarged its population. It 
was, however, no " Lotus Land," where the sdontaneous produce of 
the soil supported the inhabitants in corrupting sloth, to breathe ar 
enervating air. Every ocean breeze of Cape May is an ethereal tor 
pure as the quintessence of the elixir of lile. There are no long- 
vailing, exhaustive extremes of torrid heat, and winter, comparati' 
brief, is only rigorous enough to destroy the germs of malaria, l<j 
superpurify the atmosphere with its frosts, and brace anew the vital 
powers of man and beast. The necessary pursuits of the pioneers 
were all manly, demanding hardihood, muscle, and courage; develop- 
ing strength, heroism, and force of character. 

There were about fifteen hundred people in Cape May County in 
1758, with an estimated income of about twenty-two thousand dollars. 
When the war of 1812 began, the Cape had a population of three 
thousand five hundred persons, its commercial importance having in- 
creased in a greater degree. The final war with England was a naval 
contest ; the interest of Cape May in such a struggle may be inferred. 
From first to last, in the various wars for freedom and independence, 
the waters in view from the towers of Sea Grove have been the scene 
of many naval conflicts. An interesting volume might be written of 
events when a British fleet lay constantly over against Henlopen ; when 
they captured and burned the small craft of the bay, and in their 
launches cruised about, threatening to land and ravage the Cape. 

What a romantic chapter the account of tlie watchful coast guard 
would make! And what an exciting scene it must have been, when 
the fast Yankee frigate. Alliance, then under Commodore Barry, fled 
out of the Delaware, to avoid a hopeless contest, and made her way to 
Rhode Island at the rate of fourteen knots an hour, running down the 
Speedwell and seizing two sloops of war, to fly back to the shores 
where her timbers grew, and land her wounded commander in the port 
of Boston! Then there was the first naval conflict of the Revolution, 
fought by the Hyder Ally, under the gallant Captain Barney, a privateer 
with four nine-pounder guns and one hundred and twenty-six men, 
which stole down from Philadelphia disguised as a merchantman, to 
attack the General Monk with eighteen nine-pounder guns and one 
hundred and fifty men on board. When the captain cried "Board!" 



IV//V AMERICA WON IN THE FIGHT. 



71 



his men were to fire ; when he cried " Fire !" they were to board. 
Alongside the Monk, Barry shouted his first command. The brave 
Enghsh crowd to repel boarders ; the Hyder Ally rocks from stem to 
stern ; everything that can carry a bullet explodes in the very faces of 
the foe. " Fire!" — in a flash the Yankee cutlasses are on the English 
deck I Doubly duped, twice tricked, the Monk surrendered: two- 
thirds of her crew were dead and wounded; but four were killed and 
fifteen hurt on board the privateer. 

Another fight, turning the other way this time. A large American 
privateer, beset by a fleet of British launches, just off Cape May shore. 
A long fight, and a close one, until the vessel manceuvering too near the 
strand, strikes, and by and by goes to pieces in the breakers. 

A^nd so a book might be written of the waters around Cape May, as 
a scene of war and bloodshed. But to what good end ? It could not 
prove that English hearts were cowardly, or that Americans were 
more than the world admits them to be. America won, in the last 
fight with England, because of finer modeled, better rigged, and more 
" handy" vessels ; and because on those vessels, for the first time, long- 
range guns and cannon were supplied with "sights," and trained with 
the deadly accuracy of the rifle on the mark. It was the thunderbolt 
against the hail-storm ; it was precision against mass ; it was the rifle 
against the shot-gun; it was invention against routine; and science 
won, as it will forever in any fight. To-day, England sights her guns 
with telescopes ; she clothes her warrior-ships in sevenfold steel ; she 
buoys them with cork; she lights them with electricity; she drives 
them by steam, like avalanches; and by steam handles guns of eighty 
tons like toys, in the recesses of invulnerable turrets! Well, cannot 
the United States do as much ? They have done, and are doing, 
better. 

At the extreme point of Cape May, in the centre of Sea Grove 
beach, a tall spar bears aloft the flag of the American Union. Near 
by, a neat but peculiar building attracts the scrutiny of the observer. 
This is the United States Signal Station, and there keen-eyed vigilance 
watches and notes the skies, the clouds, the winds, the seas, and all 
the grand phenomena and minute signs of nature. On lofty moun- 
tains, amid deserts, by great lakes, everywhere throughout the terri- 
tory of the United States, are similar posts of observation, and every- 
where the same untiring watchfulness. The telegraphic wire links all 
these points together, and connects all with the central observatory at 
Washington. 

It may be an overcast afternoon in September; nothing especially 
betokens danger, but vessel after vessel comes down the bay, catches 
sight of the station, and quietly passes behind the gigantic breakwater 
above Henlopen. An English ship sweeps down the coast, the cross 
of Britain bravely borne above her caiivas ; she too sights the station, 



72 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



and turns her helm, and bears sail, to gain, ere nightfall, sea-room and 
an offing. Night comes early, and with night the storm. The two 
great lights answer each other's glances across the bay, over seas 
which howl and show flashes of foam, like wolves snarling white- 
fanged in the tempestuous darkness! But the ships are safe, folded 
like sheep in a quiet place ; for all day long the danger signal has 
been displayed, and they have learned to heed it; and that is an 
American idea, deserving fuller development, and worth more than 
the war-ships of the world. 

There are three edifices most prominent at Sea Grove, the Light- 
House, the Signal Station, and the Pavilion : they typify the Nation and 
the Age; they actualize the beneficence of Popular Government, the 
philanthropy of Science, and the power of Moral Sentiment, in the 
sublimity of Religious P'reedom : these, rather than batteries, armies, 
and navies, are the conquering forces of the future. 

To show the critical and useful nature of the work done by the 
United States Signal Service, and as a matter of information, the fol- 
lowing table is introduced ; of the value of such statistics no well-in- 
formed person need to be advised. 

The records of the United States Signal Service show the following 
figures for the three most prominent resorts on the New Jersey coast: 



MEAN DAILY HUMIDITY. 

Cape Atlantic 

May. City. 

J"iy 88.3 S5.7 

August 78.8 79.0 

September 78. 9 83.0 ' 

3 months 82.0 82.6 



Long 
Branch. 

78.4 
77-4 
80.0 

78.6 



MEAN DAILY TEMPERATURE. 

Cape Atlantic ^-o".? 

A lay. City. Branch. 

July 692 70.3 71.4 

August 68 8 69.5 69,9 

September 68.6 67.8 67.5 

3 montlis 68.9 69.2 69.6 



Thus it is seen that Cape May is the coolest place along the coast, 
and as dry as Atlantic City. 

The village of Cape May escaped the ravages of war. Once, in 18 12, 
the Poictiers, a British line-of-battle ship, appeared off the place, and 
threatened it with bombardinent unless it was suppHed with water; the 
cheap ransom was paid at once, and the enemy sailed away. While 
the P^nglish fleet lay in Delaware Bay, in 18 12, its officers managed to 
keep, so far as personalities went, on very good terms with the people 
of Cape May, and made " The Beach" what it is now, a place of health- 
ful, free, and gay resort. The village of Cape May, though loyal, was 
hospitable, and the chronicles assure us that its amusements were 
shared by friends and foes together in the greatest amity, and that, 
when the fleet of Albion sailed away at last, more than one of the 
heroes and heroines of the time gave evidence of their faith, by obedi- 
ence to the command, " Love your enemies." 

In 18 12, the present site of Cape May City was already the location 



OLD-FASmONED FROLICS AT CAPE MAY. 



71 



of a considerable hamlet ; even then popular as a place of resort in 
summer. " Cape Island" was purchased of Dr. Coxe, throu;j;h his 
agents, by William Jacoks and Humphrey Hughes, in 1689 — a tract of 
five hundred and forty-six acres, or more. Jacoks sold to Thomas 
Hand, and Randall Hewit bought an interest in the Island. Hand, 
Hewit, and Hughes held the property until 1700, and it was long cul- 
tivated and fertile land. But in the mean time the settlement increased, 
and the corn-fields were narrowed. In 1829, Watson, the annalist, 
visited Cape May City, "a village of about twenty houses," says he, 
" and the streets were very clean and grassy." 

Very rapidly after the war of 18 12 Cape May began to assume a dis- 
tinctive character as a watering place, and its history from that time 
becomes modified accordingly. Gradually the fashions of Cape May 
have changed — are changing still, and not for the worse. 

For an idea of the earlier methods of travel, and the ways and 
manners of sea-side visitors in the olden time, nothing can be better 
than the following, from Lippincotfs Magazine: "Strange old sloops 
and bateaux used in those times to move slowly down the Delaware, 
bearing eager Philadelphians on pleasure bent. Other sojourners 
would drive miserably down in their dearborns, dragged by tired 
nags through the interminable sandy road from Camden. On the 
adoption of steam for navigation, a modest steamboat was conducted 
by Mr. Wilmon Whilldin, and cut its way down the long Delaware 
in what was deemed a fleet and stylish manner, greatly improving the 
prosperity of the place. The customs of those earlier times were very 
primitive and democratic. Large excursion-parties of gay girls and 
festive gentlemen would journey together, engaging the right to 
occupy Atlantic Hall, a desolate barn of a place, fifty feet square, 
whose proprietor was Mr. Hughes. Then, while the straggling vil- 
lagers stared, these cargoes of mischief-makers would bear down 
upon the ocean, ducking and splashing in old suits of clothes brought 
in their carpet-sacks, and gathering the conditions of a fine appetite. 
The m;ijor-domo of Atlantic Hall, one Mackenzie, would send out to 
see what neighbor had a sheep to sell; the animal found, all the visitors 
of the male sex would turn to and help him dress it. Meantime, parties 
of foragers would go out among tlie farmers around ravaging the 

r> o o 111 

neighborhood for Indian corn. When the mutton was cooked and 
the corn boiled, an appetite would have accumulated sufficient to 
make these viands seem like the ambrosia of Olympus. Those were 
fine, heart-hold times, and when our predecessors at Cape May went 
down for a lark, they meant it and they had it. At night, when dead- 
tired after the fiddling and the contra-dances, the barn-like hall was 
partitioned off into two sleeping-rooms by a drapery of sheets. '1 he 
maids slept tranquilly on one side the curtains, the lads on the other. 
Successive days brought other sports, — fishing in the clumsy boats, 



74 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

rides in hay-wafrons over the deep white roads, the endless variety- 
being supplied, after all, by the bathinf:r, which was always the same 
and ever new. These primitive bivouacs were succeeded by a steady 
service of steamers on the Delaware and the erection of substantial 
and civilized hotels." 

Thomas H. Hughes, Jonas C. Miller, R. S. Ludlam, and the Messrs. 
McMakin were among the first to erect large and commodious board- 
ing-houses. Increasing custom demanded multiplied conveniences, 
and a host of varied places of entertainment grew up, from the small 
and modest restaurant to the monster hotel with its fifteen hundred 
guests at once. Meantime private cottages became numerous, the 
resident population enlarged, and a city was built up " where," says 
a writer in 1856, "a few years ago corn grew and verdure flourished." 
It would be a pleasant task to note the particulars of such a progress 
in full, and the reader could not fail of interesting information, but the 
work is left for another pen, or a future time. Material increase and 
prosperity is not the final test of development, and the scope of the 
present discussion demands attention to other and important matters. 

§ Man is a religious being; the impulse to worship, an ineradicable 
instinct of his undying soul. Tyranny is the trait of the brute; it is 
the bestial element in man which offends against the prerogative • of 
reason, and seeks, in intolerance, despotism over the spirit. Ambition 
and avarice enlarged their efforts to aggrandize themselves in the 
colonization of New Jersey; but, after all, the settlement of the State 
is found to be due, through persecution, to the love of liberty and the 
principles of religion. 

"America," says an eminent historian, "was secured from bigotry 
by lier welcome to every sect ; each rallied round a truth, their collision 
could but eliminate error. The eclectic American mind struggled for 
universality while it asserted freedom. The Old World looked to the 
American Colonies for the benefit of commerce, for mines, for natural 
productions, but received revolutions, — the consequence of moral 
power." At Cape May, in as great a degree as in any other place, 
influences were early at work tending to hospitality of opinion and a 
broad and catliolic spirit. Counting the whalemen as the pioneers of 
the county, Calvinism was the form of faith earliest introduced, but 
the Swedish Lutherans soon exerted an influence upon the community, 
and the Baptists and Quakers, not long after, were added as a powerful 
element. The English Cluirch was strong on the shores to the west 
of the bay, where, for a time, the Reverend William Becket, an author 
and poet, held a broad parish. It had its adherents at Cape May also, 
but its connection with the monarchy, as an established Church, weak- 
ened its influence at the Revolutionary period. 

The Baptists are said, in " Benedict's History of the Baptists," to 
have arrived at Cape May from England and formed a church as early 



"THE SCUM OF THE REFCRMATIONr 

as 1675. Johnson, in his sketch of Salem, says the same; but Dr. 
Beesley supposes a mistake in the date, as there is no record of a white 
popuLation until 1685, none of a Baptist church until 1711. I'.lse- 
where the doctor writes, " History throws no light on the original 
occupiers of the soil. Conjecture only can be consulted on the sub- 
ject." It is quite probable that some of the Mennonist Baptists of 
Plockhoy's colony may have escaped to Cape May, from the spoliation 
of Carr, in 1664, with Swedes and Dutch from Christina and New 
Amstel, — refugees for the same cause. 

The Baptists, "the scum of the Reformation," as they were called, 
were the democrats of the Protestant Church; the Calvinists aspired 
for theocracy, and made the Church dominant in the State ; the Church 
of England took " submission" to royal prerogative as a " badge," and 
Luther taught that it was " a heathenish doctrine ; that a wicked ruler 
may be deposed." But, plebeians themselves, the Baptists were consist- 
ent, and unflinchingly dealt with the relations of life, threatening an 
end to kingcraft, priestcraft, and feudalism. Hosts of the peasantry of 
Germany perished in the persecutions against the Baptists ; arrogantly 
they were trodden under foot, and scorn and reproach heaped upon 
tlieir memory. As might be expected, wherever the Baptists found 
shelter in America, in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, they 
became a power, witnessing for independence, republicanism, and free 
religion. 

One of the early pastors of the Baptists at Cape May was Nathaniel 
Jenkins, a Welshman, born in Cardiganshire in 1678. He arrived in 
America in 1710, and assumed his position in the church at Cape May 
in 1712. Mr. Jenkins was a man of character and ability, with fair 
education ; from 1 723 to 1 733 he was a member of the Assembly ; he 
was also a trustee in the Loan Office, and a local deputy and attorney 
of Governor Hamilton, in all of which positions he served with honor. 
Not long after the Baptist pastor became a legislator he had the oppor- 
tunity of doing the state some service and distinguishing his princi- 
ples. The emigrants from New England, accustomed to puritanical 
rigor, quite conscientiously strove for a long time to engraft their perse- 
cuting policy upon the institutions of New Jersey. When Mr. Jenkins 
was first a member, a bill was brought into the Assembly to punish 
such as denied the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the 
inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, etc., etc. This the Baptist legislator 
opposed with all a Welshman's zeal and action. " I believe the doc- 
trmes in question," said he, "as much as the promoter of that ill- 
designed bill, but will never consent to oppose the opposers with law, 
or with any weapon save that of argument." "Accordingly, the bill 
was suppressed, to the great mortification of those who wanted to 
raise in New Jersey the spirit which so raged in New England." 

The Baptist church was from six to seven miles north of Sea Grove, 



76 SCHEVICHDI AXD THE STRAND. 

at what is now the district of Cape May Court-House; there Mr. Jen- 
kins died and there is his grave. 

The early presence and work of the Baptists at Cape May perhaps 
left fewer to adhere to the Quakers. There were a number of Friends 
at the Cape in the early days, but they never became as numerous as 
in Cumberland and other counties. Neither tiie Friends nor any others 
have been persecuted at Cape May. Quakers generally went where 
they were not wanted, but needed ; sometimes their peculiar principles 
subjected them to loss, even at Cape May, but no persecution appears 
to have been intended. Thomas Learning, who came to Cape May in 
1692, and became a whaleman, and then a farmer, seems to have been 
a Quaker; among other things he records : " In 1706, I built my house. 
Samuel Matthews took a horse from me worth £"] , because I could 
not train." " Training" would have prevented the levy, and paying the 
fine for contempt would liave saved the horse from sale; Quaker prin- 
ciples forbade one and the other; it was hard upon Thomas Learning, 
but what could Samuel Matthews do with a Christian who would not 
fight — nor swear ! 

Within the memory of the elder people of this generation, a Quaker 
meeting-house stood in the northern part of Cape May County, and 
there the tradition is that year after year, every First-day, two old 
Quakers got together, and silently sat out the hours ; furthermore, these 
Friends were not friendly, not on speaking terms, and so spake not 
at all. By and by one of the old men died, and then the survivor sat 
alone, scarcely more solitary, no whit more silent, until at last he too 
came no more. But the part the Quakers took in founding Cape May 
County has not been without a permanent effect for good, — and there 
are men to-day everywhere who, could they but learn to hold their 
tongues as faithfully as the two in the above story, " the world would 
be the better for it ! ' 

Pre-eminently, Calvinism has appealed to the human intellect. The 
Democratic State, Free Church, and Common School arose together. 
The Church which invoked thought, as a co-worker with zeal and faith, 
gave guarantees to progress; the Antinomians of Massachusetts ad- 
vanced beyond Geneva, and in Connecticut, where Calvinism enjo}-ed a 
hundred years of peace, Massachusetts was left behind. There reli- 
gious pride was forgotten ; predestination was less considered than 
philanthropy ; persecution was abandoned, and reason and charity were 
made the basis of law. "Virtue," said the great Connecticvit Presby- 
terian divine, Jonathan Edwards, " consists in universal love." From 
the churches of Connecticut were drawn the men and women who 
planted Presbyterianism at Cape May; there also freedom and peace 
favored the finest developments, and the influence of Calvinism may be 
recognized in the stability, thoroughness, and intelligence which have 
characterized the people. 




\ t: 



HISTORY OF COLD SPRING CHURCH. yy 

The first Presbyterian church in Cape May County was estabhshed 
at Cold Spring, two miles to the north of Sea Grove; its earliest 
chronicles have disappeared, but it is recorded that the first minister 
was the Rev. John Bradner, a native of Scotland. Mr. Bradner was 
a candidate for the ministry when invited to Cold Spring, but Rev. 
Allen H. Brown, in his "Outline History of the Presbyterian Church 
in West South Jersey," says he had no authority to preach, and it 
marks the unorganized state of Church affairs at the time, that Messrs. 
Davis, Hampton, and Henry, the three nearest ministers, took the re- 
sponsibility of examining and licensing him in March, 17 14, he being 
ordained May 6th, 1715. In 1721 Mr. Bradner was removed to Goshen, 
Orange County, New York, still keeping, however, his connection with 
the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Mr. Bradner died before September, 
1733. The estate now occupied as the parsonage, consisting of some 
two hundred acres, was conveyed by him, for the use of the pastor of 
this Church, to Humphrey Hughes, George Hand, John Parsons, 
Joseph Weldon (Whilldin), James Spicer, and twenty-seven others. 
Mr. Bradner was succeeded by Rev. Samuel P'inley, who. as a resident 
at Cape May, often officiated, though not settled there. Mr. Finley was 
distinguished for learning and personal holiness; the great revival 
among the Presbyterian and Baptist churches from 1740 to 1743 was 
regarded as, in a large degree, God's blessing upon his labors; in 1761 
he became President of Princeton College ; he was made a doctor of 
divinity, by the University of Glasgow, in 1763, and, after an active and 
useful life, died in remarkable peace and happiness, at Philadelphia, 
July i6th, 1766, being then fifty-one years of age. 

P>om 172 I to 175 I the Cold Spring Church had no settled minister; 
Messrs. Beatty, Dean, Davenport, and others, were a temporary supply. 
The Rev. Daniel Lawrence was at last installed, June 20th, 1754. Of 
his ministry little is known, except that in addition to his labors at 
Cape May he was often at the Forks of Brandywine, and, in 1755, 
went to preach at " New England over the mountains." Mr. Law- 
rence ministered to the Cold Spring Church twelve years ; he died in 
1766; his grave is at Cold Spring. After the decease of Mr. Law- 
rence, the Rev. John Brainerd supplied the Cold Spring pulpit in 1769 
and 1770, and there is a report that a Mr. Schcnck, a progenitor of the 
Hon. Robert Schenck, preached at Cape May, probably about this 
time. 

Mr. James Watt was the next minister ; the tombstone records his 
death November iQlh, 1 789, aged 46 years. Mr. Watts is said to have 
been a man remarkable for disinterested kindness, integrity, and ability; 
he was of the First Presbytery of Philadelphia, and represented that 
body in the General Assembly of I7''^9. 

The sombre manners of some of the stern New England forefathers 
gave reason for an accusation trite as untrue, that Presbyterians were 



78 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



always an austere, sour, morose set of ascetics ; the biographical anec- 
dotes of the Rev. Mr. Watt might be quoted in refutal. Like the 
apostle Peter, Mr. Watt was much inclined to " go a-fishing," and of 
all fish the devil-fish was the one he most delighted to pursue. " The 
devil" is often a large, powerful fish, its capture rough sport. On one 
occasion, while accompanied by two other clergymen, Mr. Watt har- 
pooned a devil-fish in Delaware Bay, so large and strong that it 
rapidly drew the boat toward the sea. Amid the apprehension felt by 
all, but especially by his guests, Dr. Watt, as he was familiarly called, 
broke out in hearty laughter. He assured his companions that he 
could not conceal his amusement at the idea of three clergymen of 
the orthodox Church being run away with by the Devil ! 

Mr. Watt was succeeded by the Rev. Abijah Davis, of whom there 
is no record. The Rev. David Edwards followed him, dying in 1813. 
After 1808, the church-record has been preserved. The Rev. Isaac 
A. Ogden was installed 1817; he resigned and went West in 1825. 
His successor was the Rev. Alvin H. Parker, installed June 19th, 1825, 
on the occasion of the first meeting of the Presbytery at Cold Spring. 
The elders composing the session were Matthew Whillden (Whilldin), 
John Stites, Jacob Foster, Jesse Hughes, and Jacob R. Hughes. Moses 
Williamson was ordained and installed at Cold Spring in 183 1 ; he 
founded a successful academy there. Under his ministry the church 
prospered; he resigned in 1872, being now an honored resident of 
Cape May City. 

The pastor at Cold Spring is the Rev. Thomas S. Dewing, to whom, 
with the Rev. Dr. Alfred E. Nevins, thanks are due for items of this 
history. Mr. Dewing began his labors October 1st, 1873, and was 
installed May 6th, 1874. The Cold Spring Church has two hundred 
members; the Sabbath-school two hundred and fifty scholars ; a chapel 
has been built near the Cape, and the church improved, the means 
tberefor being derived from a legacy by Hon. Matthew Marcy. 

The Presbyterian church at Cape Island was erected in 1845, as 
"the visitors' church;" there the Rev. Mr. Williamson, before men- 
tioned, preached on Sabbath and Tuesday evenings, until 1851, when 
the Cape Island Presbyterian Church was organized. The Rev. E. 
P. Shields is now in charge, and under his " diligent culture" and 
"judicious oversight," says Dr. Nevins, the society is prosperous. 
There is also an P^piscopal, a Methodist, and a Baptist church at 
Cape May City. 

In the Cold Spring church-yard, and in another burying-place near 
the bay, above the steamboat landing, are entombed the aslies of many 
of the pioneers of Cape May, and of the generations which followed 
them. The tombstone is the only record of some who, once active and 
conspicuous, arc now no more regarded ; their names, their memory, 
obsolete, except among the venerable few. 



THE SAFE BASIS OF PROGRESS. -o 

But an enlightened faith dwells not in tombs, and recognizes death 
only as an incident of life; they whose bodies went down into the 
grave at Cape May came to their earthly consummation in a land where 
the hope of a happy immortality was part of the common creed. 
Strong in religious faith, upheld by a consciousness of spiritual things, 
the hour of their departure was to many of them an hour of triumph. 
One and all, they lived — they died; their example still remains: in 
high or low degree they filled the sphere they found, " whereunto 
they were appointed." The soul scorns the history that ends at the 
grave; as we stand amid the trampled dust of by-gone myriads, it lifts 
its voice within, to assert the presence of the angelic hosts and pro- 
claim over all the just and loving providence of God. 

Considering thus briefly the history of the churches of Cape I\Iay, 
regarding especially the Presbyterian organization, it is noticeable that 
while Calvinism has been influential, it has by no means been the sole 
creed of the people ; the author follows the record of Presbyterianism 
at greatest length, because the past history of that church and the 
recent action of Presbyterians at Sea Grove are strikingly pertinent 
to his argument, that freedom and equality are the safe basis of ma- 
terial and spiritual progress. 

Society, as some imagine, depends upon despotism, and religion they 
think a tender plant, thriving best in the shadow of a throne, hedged 
by bayonets ; grafted, at least, upon some constitution, and guarded by 
facile courts. The Presbyterian Church is a free, a self-governing 
republican church. New Jersey has been democratic in the extreme, 
and absolutely tolerant. At Cape May Presbyterianism has had free- 
dom, continuity, scope, and time, without isolation; it is fair to accept 
the outgrowth as a test of democratic republicanism and of the ten- 
dency of Calvinism in the United States. To learn this requires, in 
addition to a survey of the past, an observation of the novel yet 
characteristic developments of the present. 

§ In passing from that which has become historical in relation to the 
Presbyterians of Cape May to an observation of the present, one thing 
may be remarked of peculiar interest and significance: the faith of the 
forefathers has, as it were, become hereditary; the names of prominent 
Presbyterians to-day are those found in the old church chronicles and 
traditions. Thus, Joseph Weldon (Whilldon, VVhilldcn, or Whilldin) 
was one of the original trustees of Cold Spring Cliurch. Matthew 
Whillden (Whilldin), with John Stites and Jesse and Jacob R. Hughes, 
were elders of the session in 1 825, and to-day Alexander Whilldin, after 
serving his church for a full generation as an elder, is now President 
of the Sea Grove Association. Of the above officers of the church, 
Mr. John Stites and Matthew Whilldon each held the position of 
"active and ruling elders" for fifty years or more; they were contem- 
poraries, and their terms of office were nearly coincident. 



So SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

The organization over which Mr. Alexander Whilldin presides, 
having both secular and religious purposes, is Presbyterian in its 
antecedents and affiliations, though not exclusively sectarian in its 
constituency and designs, yet its work has been one of the most 
striking manifestations of character and tendency given by Presby- 
terians for many years ; and hence the value of the history of the 
Association, and its force as evidence in establishing the assumptions 
which are embodied in the first paragraphs of this work, and which 
are the conclusion of its argument. 

Following the course of our narrative and the discussion together, 
the history of Sea Grove becomes repuisite, and immediately in order. 
No account of the Sea Grove Association, its origin and operations, can 
be at all complete without some sketch, more or less circumstantial, 
of the gentleman who presides over the business of that corporation ; 
hence the necessity of reference to him in the succeeding paragraphs. 

The founder of Sea Grove is a native of Philadelphia, having been 
born in that city in i8o8; his father was a sea-captain, and a native 
of New Jersey. In 1812, leaving France on a return voyage to this 
country, he never reached our shores, no tidings of his fate ever 
coming to relieve the suspense of the bereaved family. This sad 
event left Alexander Whilldin an orphan at the early age of four years. 
The widow with her son and two daughters left Philadelphia, and went 
to reside at the old homestead in Cape May County. 

There, on the old farm near the Court-House, Alexander lived for 
twelve years, receiving only the meagre education that the country 
school-house of that day could give. In his sixteenth year he returned 
to Philadelphia and entered a store, where, without grumbling, he 
performed the duties of youngest clerk, including making the fires, 
sweeping the store, running of errands, and other things too often 
counted as drudgery nowadays. He was not too proud to work, 
and he worked earnestly, industriously, faithfully. He remained here 
as clerk eight years, rising from one position to another, gaining the 
confidence of his employer and of all about him. In 1832 he started 
business for himself, as a commission merchant in cotton and wool, 
the first year with a i)artner who brought in needed capital, and after- 
wards alone. 

His career as a business man now began in earnest. He soon de- 
veloped those traits which mark the solid man of business wherever 
you find him. He was prudent, sound in judgment, courteous, self- 
reliant, industrious, and of indomitable energy and persistence. He at 
once gave proof of great executive ability, and of capacity to direct 
extensive and complicated affairs. With such a power at the helm, 
his business rapidly grew to large proportions ; and although at one 
time embarrassment surrounded him, his native resources of energy, 
sagacity, and superior judgment enabled him finally to extricate him- 








ALEXANDER WHII.LKIN, KOUNDKU OK SEA C.KOVE. 



AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. 8r 

self honorably, to meet every obligation he had assumed, and to build 
himself up on the experience of his trials upon a broader and surer 
basis than ever. 

The peculiar talents of such a merchant could not of course remain 
the exclusive possession of his own large business. Mr. Whilldin was 
sought in commercial and financial circles, and was for many years 
President of the American Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia, 
and prominently interested in the management of other pecuniary 
trusts. His philanthropic sympathies, known generosity, and the 
personal interest he has always taken in educational, benevolent, and 
religious enterprises have made him prominent also in many noble 
public charities of Philadelphia; his upright character, and wisdom in 
counsel, making him invaluable as a leader in his own church denomi- 
nation, and very efficient as a manager in the American Sunday-school 
Union, Presbyterian Hospital, and other worthy educational and phil- 
anthropic institutions. 

A truthful likeness of Mr. Whilldin is included in the illustrations 
of this work. Although nearing his seventieth year after a laborious 
life, he enjoys the reward of ever temperate habits in an eye as clear, 
a step as elastic, and a mind as vigorous as most men of fifty. He is 
still actively at the head of his extended business, which is conducted 
in company with his three sons, and remains, as he has been for a full 
half-century, a respected and useful citizen of the great city where he 
was born. Though so long a resident of Philadelphia, the experienced 
merchant has never outworn his fondness for the scenes of his boy- 
hood, or failed to appreciate the advantages of an annual sojourn at 
the old familiar sea-side places. It has been for many years his delight 
to escape from the cares of business, and seek beside the waters of 
Cape Alay the recreation which nowhere else seemed as grateful and 
complete. For half a century, e.xcept one season in Europe, he has 
been there every summer. 

Not only as a visitor to Cape May, but as the holder of considerable 
real estate there, Mr. Whilldin has watched with interest the growth 
and peculiar prosperity of the county ; desirous, as a philanthropist, 
that all should enjoy and be benefited by the natural peculiarities of 
the place, he has seen, with regret, the increase of a bad fashion which 
renders the season for rest and health-giving resort to nature but a 
wearying round of dissipation. " More than twenty years ago," says 
the founder of Sea Grove, " I had this subject under consideration." 
Many beside Mr. Whilldin had long deplored watering-place extrava- 
gance, and several denominations had established quiet places of con- 
genial resort for their members, but none existed among Presbyterians. 
Providentially, as some of his friends declare, Mr. Whilldin was in 
possession of a most convenient location, whose great but long-reserved 
natural advantages invited occupation; besides, he had the courage, 



82 SCHEYTCHBI AND THE STRAND. 

the means, and the influence, to make successful whatever he con- 
sidered it his duty to undertake. 

Tlie site of Sea Grove was purchased of " The West New Jersey 
Society in England," by Jonathan Pyne the elder, through Jeremiah 
Basse as agent; being inherited by Jonathan Pyne (2d) and Abigail 
Pyne, it was deeded by them and Robert Courtney, Abigail Pyne's 
husband, to Henry Stites, in 17 12. The property remained in the 
Stites family until the marriage of Jane G. Stites with Alexander Whill- 
din, in 1836, and was by them conveyed to the Sea Grove Association, 
March 15th, 1875, having been in Presbyterian hands one hundred and 
sixty-thi-ee years. 

"I have come," said Mr. Whilldin, " to consider it the providence of 
God that we have been led to retain this Presbyterian ground all these 
years, to become a subject of special consecration at last." To him it 
seemed little less than desecration to appropriate the place he loved to 
the use for which nature had pre-eminently fitted it — that of a superior 
sea-side resort — if it must be done in the ordinary manner. Yet it 
seemed a pity so fine a place as Sea Grove should benefit so i^v^^, es- 
pecially when scores of thousands in the great cities not far away 
needed every summer the comfort and help of the ocean air, and yet 
found themselves repelled and excluded from most popular resorts by 
the crowding, the confusion, the mad revelry, and recklessness which 
more and more characterized them. 

Under the circumstances, Mr. Whilldin took counsel in the first 
place, as has been stated, of his own thoughts and inspirations, for some 
time considering the matter; then, like a wise and practical man, he 
conferred with his wife. "We," said he, " laid the matter before Qod;" 
and then, feeling as if Heaven intended to bless the work, the Presby- 
terian man of business conferred with his brethren. His suggestions 
were generally approved, and it was decided to utilize the choice loca- 
tion at the point of Cape May, and "furnish a Moral and Religious Sea- 
side Home for the glory of God and the welfare of Man, zvhere lie may 
be refreshed and invigorated body and soul, and better fitted for the highest 
and noblest duties of life." 

In furtherance of this object an organization was effected the i8tli 
of February, 1875, which was chartered, with liberal franchises, by the 
Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey the same 
year. 

This corporation was styled the " Sea Grove Association," and its 
Board of Directors was made to consist of Alexander Whilldin. Dr. 
V. M. D. Marcy, Downs Edmunds, J. Newton Walker, and John Wana- 
maker. 

Section 6th of the charter vests the Board of Directors with the 
power of regulation and control in the following terms : 

" 6. And be it enacted, That a majority of the directors for the time 



LAW AND ORDER AT SEA GROVE. 



83 



being shall form a board for the transaction of the business of said 
corporation, and shall have power to make such by-laws, ordinances, 
and regulations as shall seem necessary and convenient for the man- 
agement and disposition of the stock, effects, and concerns of the said 
corporation, and for the purpose of restricting nuisances and of compel- 
ling a uniform system of improvements; the said company are hereby 
authorized and invested with power to incorporate into any deed or 
conveyance made by them, whether in fee simple or otherwise, a clause 
or condition forbidding the sale upon the premises of any spirituous 
or intoxicating liquors, and to require of any grantee of said company 
to make and maintain such style and character of improvement on said 
lots so conveyed, or on the streets fronting thereon, as to the said com- 
pany may seem best for securing a uniform system of development and 
improvement throughout the said settlement ; and the board of directors 
of said company shall have the power to appoint such peace officers as 
they may deem necessary for the purpose of keeping order on the 
premises, which officers shall be paid by the said company, but shall 
have when on duty the same power and authority and immunities which 
constables and other peace officers under the laws of this State possess 
or enjoy when on duty as such, and they shall have the same power to 
enforce obedience to any rule and regulation of said corporation for the 
preservation of quiet and good order on the premises of said corporation 
and their grantees; provided, that such by-laws or regulations are not 
contrary to the laws or constitution of the United States or of this State." 

Subsequently the officers of the Association were elected, with Alex- 
ander Whdldin, President and Treasurer, 20 South Front Street, Phila- 
delphia; J. C. Sidney, Secretary, 204 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia; 
Downs Edmunds, Assistant Secretary, Cape May Point. 

The Directors of the Sea Grove Association adopted a series of by- 
laws and regulations which provided for the systematic and business- 
like conduct of its affairs, according to the terms of its charter. Of 
these regulations the 12th, 13th, and 15th are special and significant in 
character, and by their nature or general interest, and are therefore here 
inserted : 

" 12. All buildings and other improvements will be subject to the 
approval of the directors or to an agent appointed for that purpose by 
them. 

" 13. All deeds will contain a clause for the purpose of restricting 
nuisances and of compelling a uniform system of improvement, forbid- 
ding the sale or keeping for sale any spirituous or intoxicating liquors, 
and generally providing for the submission to such rules and regulations 
as the Board may from time to time direct. Neither the holder of a lot, 
stockholder, or other person shall permit any amusement or act incon- 
sistent with the character of the place and the objects of the Association, 
as set forth in the charter. ******** 



84 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

" 15. The Pavilion is intended for religious or other meetings. Parties 
desiring to occupy it will not be permitted to do so without the authority 
in writing of the President, or in his absence of the majority of the 
Board, who shall first ascertain the character of the intended meeting, 
refusing the use thereof to all such as are not compatible with the objects 
and purposes of the Association." 

The stock of the company being taken up at once, operations began, 
and were pushed with great energy. After the manner of the Calvinist 
Puritans of New England long ago, the first structure in the new settle- 
ment was an edifice for the purposes of education and religion. " The 
Pavilion," though vastly different from the comfortless churches in 
which the Pilgrims delighted, was yet the creation of the same spirit, 
though working under vastly different circumstances. As a building, 
it is well adapted to the purpose for which it has been constructed. In 
whatever respect it may fall short of the too great splendor of some 
city sanctuaries, it has one excellence in which many costly churches 
are deficient : as seen by the view on another page, it admits of perfect 
ventilation. 

Completed late in the spring of 1875, the history of the Sea Grove 
Pavilion is evidently brief; still, as the centre of Sea Grove enterprise, 
it has already attracted much attention, and been the scene of several 
memorable gatherings. For the ensuing record and description of the 
first season of Pavilion meetings the author is indebted to the Rev. Alfred 
E. Nevins, D.D., the superintendent and friendly manager of the services. 
Though a distinguished array of clerical talent of various denominations 
was always available through the season, yet to the supervision and 
care of Dr. Nevins was due much of the regularity and success of those 
assemblies. In connection with the regular Pavilion services on Sunday, 
a Sabbath-school was organized, and conducted with decided success 
by Mr. S. E. Hughes, a member of the Methodist church. 

Recounting the already stated objects of the Sea Grove Association, 
Dr. Nevins proceeds to remark: " During the season of 1875, it was 
truly gratif)'ing to see how this 'object' was kept in view, appreciated, 
and carried out. I^arly in July, in the attractive structure set apart for 
Divine service, and standing where but a few months before were seen 
the dense and dark forest, liundreds of visitors were summoned from 
the commodious hotel and handsome cottages by the clear and sweet 
tones of the bell, ringing through the grove and along the beach, to 
engage in the worship of their common Creator and Redeemer. And 
on every succeeding Sabbath was the same invitation given and 
accepted. A pleasing spectacle it was, on such occasions, to behold 
those who, though differing in some points of faith, yet agreed in the 
essential elements of our holy religion, the veteran and the child, the 
stranger and the familiar friend, all mingling their voices and uniting 
their liearts in praise and prayer to the God and Father of our Lord 




<5 ymm 



\ipn\m^^ 



RELIGIOUS SERVICES IN THE PAVILION. g^ 

Jesus Christ, and listening with eager ear and ardent interest to the 
exposition of His most excellent Word. Still more pleasant, if possi- 
ble, was it to see several hundreds of representative ministers and lay- 
men of the various evangelical denominations, who had been invited to 
convene for the consideration of great moral and religious subjects, on 
the 25th of August, engage for several days in the noble Pavilion in 
earnest devotions and discussions, and then on the holy Sabbath unite 
in celebrating the love of Him who ' died for our sins, according to the 
Scriptures,' who prays that His followers 'all may be one,' and who 
has gone to prepare for them a place where they shall dwell together 
in blissful fellowship through an endless existence. There is some- 
thing in the magnitude and grandeur of the ocean, as it is gazed upon, 
a great symbol of eternity, to overwhelm the mind, and cast minor 
matters into the shade. The very sight of it, in this view, tends to 
magnify the essentials of Christianity and to minify its circumstantials. 
And this effect was evidently realized in no small degree by the visit- 
ors at Sea Grove. May the flame that was kindled on the ' shore' — 
a spot which, in another land, Jesus so much delighted to frequent — 
send its light and heat throughout the country and the world! 

" 'One sole baptismal sign, 

One Lord, below, above. 
Zion, one faith is thine, 

One only watchword — Love. 
From different temples thougii it rise, 
One song ascendeth to the skies. 

" ' Oh, why should they who love 

One Gospel to unfold, 

Wlio seek one home above, 

On earth be strange and cold? 
Wliy, subjects of the Prince of Peace, 
In strife abide, and bitterness? 

•• ' Head of the church beneath, 

The catliolic — the true — 
On all her members breathe — 

Her broken frame renew ! 
Then shall Thy perfect will be done, 
When Christians love ami live as one.' " 

While the Pavilion was going up, a heavy force of men were grading 
the streets, avenues, and boulevards of Sea Grove. In the " Bird's-eye 
View of Sea Grove" which illustrates this book, the plan appears as 
laid out by Mr. Sidney, the architect. At the same time, the founda- 
tions of the "Sea Grove House" were laid, and the building pushed 
with great energy, being ready for use and thronged with hundreds of 
guests the same season. Simultaneously, many cottages arose here and 
there, all neat and attractive, and some ornately elegant ; notably that 
of the Whilldin family, illustrated, with the original Sea Grove House, 
in the view of " Atlantic Beach," from a photograph taken upon the 



86 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

completion of the first buildings of Sea Grove. Besides, as early ex- 
amples of fitness and characteristic good taste, might be mentioned 
the cottage of John Wanamaker; one for Mr. Stockton, an Episco- 
palian divine; several built on account of J. Newton Walker, M.D. ; 
those constructed by Mr. Hughes, etc., as shown in the bird's-eye view. 

Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Christians of other de- 
nominations were already owners of the soil, and began to build; be- 
sides, people, not members of any church, were drawn by the promise 
of order and morality to seek a resting-place in the borders of the new, 
fast-growing town. The frontispiece represents Cape May Point, the site 
of Sea Grove, as it appeared in 1776; the picture of "Sea Grove Beach 
by Moonlight" is a sketch of the same locality, from a different point 
of view, just before the lighthouse was moved inland, the constant 
action of the sea having worn away the low bluff until the tower 
would soon have been in danger of a fall into the encroaching waves. 
These engravings are essentially accurate, except that in the original 
paintings, from which both of them were copied, the artist, Mr. Charles 
W. Knapp, of Philadelphia, well known by his fine authentic American 
landscapes, though reproducing faithfully and beautifully from older 
sketches and various data the natural features of each scene, has in- 
troduced, for artistic effect, more figures of men and women than often 
gathered on " Barren Beach" in those days. The lighthouse being 
moved back in 1847, the scene remained without much change until 
1875, when the improvements of Sea Grove began. 

The "Bird's-ej'e View" is reduced from a design by Armitage, of 
Mr. Sidney's office, and gives the appearance of Sea Grove in the 
spring of 1876. Studied thus in connection and contrast, these pic- 
tures are more expressive than any words the writer can command. 
The other views in this volume, being from sketches by David B. Gul- 
ick, of New York, are, of course, reliiible pictures ; they present ar- 
tistically the actual features in a peculiar landscape, and, as will soon be 
seen, are significant of the remarkable influence of changing phases of 
religious sentiment upon general progress. Let the reader look at the 
picture of the gateway of Sea Grove, at the view of Lake Lily, and at 
the architecture of all the buildings in the various scenes, and then com- 
pare the liberality, taste, and good sense of Presbyterians to-day, with 
the temper manifested by the conscientiously ugly and uncomfortable 
"meeting-houses" of New England Calvinists two hundred years ago! 

§"A sea-side resort," say the Directors of the Sea Grove Associa- 
tion, in one of their publications, " is generally associated in the mind 
with lavish display, extravagant living, dissipation, and consequent ex- 
pense, to be regretted when the apparent pleasure is past and gone. 
To families of quiet habits, and who visit a summer resort, even 
where expense is no object, the glitter and show do not compensate 
for the health lost or for bad habits formed, especially by the young. 



SUMMER HOMES BESIDE THE SEA. 



87 



The fashionable hotel at a watering place may afford at enormous 
prices some luxuries and some exciting amusements, but attending 
these are generally small, inconvenient rooms, dissipation of every kind, 
a mixed, often immoral, company, the irreverent element preponder- 
ating over the moral and religious." In view of these facts, they ex- 
plain that their enterprise has been undertaken " with the idea of afford- 
ing a sea-side resort, and sea-side homes, with their economies and 
pleasures, as well as the influences arising from a religious sentiment, 
good order, and a freedom from all dissipation attending the merely 
fashionable watering places." 

To encourage home life and influences at the sea-side, the greatest 
inducements are extended to those who build at Sea Grove. Aside from 
all other advantages of ready-made and perfectly graded streets, etc., 
each builder of a cottage will be entitled to a free pass over the West 
Jersey Railroad for one, two, or three years, agreeably to cost of im- 
provement ; and all materials will be carried at a reduced rate. The 
Association, to facilitate transit from Cape May City and the steam- 
boat landing to Sea Grove, have constructed a horse railroad between 
those places. Good-sized lots at Sea Grove have been put at moderate 
prices, and, to prevent monopolizing speculation, none are sold except 
to those who agree to build within three years. The observer can de- 
tect neither overreaching greed or insane fanaticism in the develop- 
ments of Sea Grove ; the enterprise is no crusade, no pilgrimage to 
some " holy" but unhealthy sacred place, at the command of super- 
stition. 

Presbyterians to-day expect God's blessing of health only as they 
conform to natural laws, the dictates of sanitary science, and good 
sense. Speaking of the site of their enterprise, the Directors announce : 
"The land is sufficiently rolling to afford good drainage in every di- 
rection, and there are many building-sites rising twenty-five feet above 
the level of the ocean. There is no swamp on the tract, and the whole 
plot is available for building purposes. Water for drinking and culin- 
ary purposes, of the purest quality, is obtained on any part of the ground 
at a depth of sixteen feet from the surface." 

Hospitable religion, broad boulevards, perfect drainage, pure, jilen- 
tiful water, hygienic living; this is the Presbyterian programme to-day. 
Not very long ago, moody, mistaken " saints," of varied sects, counted 
religion, or the madness they called such, godliness enough, leaving 
cleanliness and care for the body to be regarded almost as a vice; 
herein is evident improvement. Progress involves no shifting of the 
grounds of principle, no change in the immutable basis of truth ; it is 
a matter of perception and receptivity. It is mankind that is " con- 
verted from the error of its way," to grow in intelligence, in morals, in 
spiritual unfolding, to the measure of a perfect life! 

Peculiar in its origin, remarkable in its development, .striking in its 



88 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

results, as a work of high civilization, as an index of progress, Sea 
Grove commands attention by the liberality, skill, and judgment every- 
where evinced, but is equally a display of good taste, a substantial re- 
cognition of the claims of the beautiful. Calling to mind the " crop-eared 
boors" of Marston Moor, the " Roundheads" of Cromwell's army, the 
parliament of" Praise God Barebones," the grim Puritans of Salem and 
Boston, the Pilgrim Fathers, "the Saints" of New Haven, the Cove- 
nanters of Scotland, and the early Presbyterians of New Jersey, with 
all the stern dogmatists of a persecuted denomination whose members 
were accused of regarding propriety and comeliness as a " wile of the 
wicked one," how strange, how inconsistent seem the works and 
ways of their lineal descendants in the spirit — the inheritors of the 
faith, the Presbyterians of to-day. Yet, whatever may, at first thought, 
seem to be the case, Sea Grove is a coherent outgrowth of Geneva, 
and Calvinism as much at home there as it was with the democratic 
and catholic Pilgrim. leathers aboard the Mayflower and at Plymouth, 
or amid the privations, gloom, austerity, and exclusiveness of the per- 
secuting Puritans during the first years of Salem and Boston. 

To make it still more plain that the principles, good manners, and 
morals of the elder generations of Calvinists are essentially preserved, 
and their foibles alone omitted, by the people of Sea Grove, the following, 
from the pen of an experienced, observing, orthodox minister, is here 
added: "Throughout the season a bright, cheerful, and sociable spirit 
prevailed. Innocent and agreeable amusements abounded. Cultured 
and friendly intercourse was cherished. Guests, without any constraint 
to do so, had an opportunity of attending family worship morning and 
evening, as well as public Divine service on the Sabbath. Nothing oc- 
curred of any kind to mar the pleasure of the visitors from North, South, 
East, and West, and every sign indicated a brilliant and useful future for 
Sea Grove. It was evident to all who visited the place for a day, a 
week, or a month, that it is just the resort that is needed, one where 
fashion and dissipation do not hold sway, where extravagance finds no 
sphere for display, where guests, without an affected pretense of piety 
or of devotional services, may enjoy the means of grace to which the 
inmates of Christian homes are accustomed in their church relations, 
and where, whilst religious advantages are supplied and cherished, 
everything like sectarianism and bigotry is eschewed. It was a joy 
to the writer that, during a visit of a number of weeks at Sea Grove, 
whilst witnessing much cheerful enjoyment, and sharing in it, he nei- 
ther saw a card or glass of liquor, nor heard a profane word. And this 
was peculiarly gratifying, as so many young persons were present, who 
could not but be benefited by so much exemption from evil influences, 
while under the power of others of an opposite character, genial, cheer- 
ing, manly, and eminentlj; salutary." 

§ It has been stated that not only Presbyterians, but Episcopalians, 



EPISCOPALIANS AT SEA GROVE. 



8g 



Lutherans, IMethodists, and others were attracted to Sea Grove. To 
show how some of these people re<^ard the place and its arrange- 
ments leads the author directly to the point of his perhaps too long 
land circumstantial argument. The subjoined paragraphs are from an 
'Episcopalian in training and by long affiliation a liberal man and a 
reformer, one familiar with great enterprises, and to whom some of the 
most remarkable acts of the Senate of the United States owe their 
conception. This gentleman made a careful examination of the affairs 
of Sea Grove at an early date, and in a letter from thence to a friend, 
but for publication, he wrote, — 

"Another visit to this delightful spot demonstrated the fact that the 
success of the enterprise is assured. 

"Although somewhat surprised at the rapid advancement of the 
work as it appeared a few weeks ago, the sight presented last Saturday 
seemed quite bewildering. 

" The place, considering the brief interval, had assumed the air of 
a lively little village, with evidences on all sides of the greatest activity 
and healthy progress. Cottages are springing up as if under the 
inspiration of magic, the commodious hotel recently begun is now 
open, the beautiful wide avenues are being graded and graveled, the 
sidewalks gently elevated above the smooth, level drives, and the busy 
workmen finishing their labors give hopeful note of preparation for the 
coming season. 

" The excursionists last Saturday appeared to enjoy the visit very 
much ; after taking a bird's-eye view of Sea Grove from the lofty 
steeple of the Pavilion, they strolled off along the beach, and visited 
the numerous objects of interest, as the clear fresh-water lake, the new 
hotel, the cottages, and grounds. 

"A sign of the progressive times is the fact that men of large ex- 
perience, keen sagacity, and ample means are attracted to South Jersey 
partly from its superior natural advantages, and, in some measure, from 
the moral tone and growing sentiments of the people u[)on the vital 
questions of temperance and prohibition, without which no community 
can reach the highest degree of moral development and material wealth. 

" The Sea Grove Association, composed of such men as Messrs, 
Alexander Whilldin, John VVanamaker, J. C. Sidney, and others of like 
earnestness and capacity, recognizing these principles, has founded this 
new settlement on the basis of morality, religion, and temperance, and 
procured such legislation as will effectually banish, within the cor- 
porate limits, the sale and traffic of intoxicating liquors. Built on this 
superstructure, with its natural advantage of position, health, accessi- 
bility, moral tone, and religious sentiments, the future of Sea Grove is 
assured. 

" The temperance feature is one which your valuable journal cannot 
too highly commend. The beneficent result which will soon be ap- 



90 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



parent from the practical workings of the prohibitory provision will 
furnish you additional arguments and illustrations to continue the 
manly fight made in Pennsylvania against the rum traffic and in favor 
of prohibition throughout the State. 

" The party returned to the city about eight o'clock without acci- 
dent, seemingly well pleased with the day's enjoyment." 

But all the world are not Presbyterians, all are not Episcopalians ; 
some are not members of any church, and yet are people of discrim- 
ination, at least in secular matters. John Calvin, in Geneva, could not 
raise himself above the persecuting spirit of his age altogether. The 
Calvinists in Holland, in England, in Massachusetts, were by the 
record held guilty of conscientious bloodshed for the offenses of con- 
science. Coming down the tide of time, what spirit ruled at Sea 
Grove? The hospitality, tolerance, and courtesy of the Sea Grove 
Christians were early put to a test, and as to the manner in which they 
bore the trial, the evidence of the one who gave whatever provocation 
may have been felt shall be admitted. 

The letters here quoted from were published at Boston, Massachu- 
setts, in the " Banner of Light," an old, ably-conducted Spiritualist 
journal, much respected by its supporters, and of world-wide circula- 
tion. Addressing the editor as a personal friend, the correspondent at 
Sea Grove freely comments as follows : 

"While your various correspondents are sending you cheerful notes 
from different points where the thousands of liberal souls congregate 
and enjoy the satisfaction of a refined society and philosophical teach- 
ings, I add my scribble from another locality, where it may seem that 
I am out of place and ought to be uncomfortable. 

" Sea Grove is a creation, and a creation by Presbyterians. If you 
take your United States map, and let your pen-handle run down the 
coast of the Atlantic southwardly until you reach Cape Henlopen, you 
will be fourteen miles beyond where I am. Still, Cape Henlopen light, 
shining across the entrance of Delaware Bay, threw its rays into my 
window last night, for I slept at the very end of Southern New Jersey, 
on the shore of the actual Cape May. The long-established watering- 
place of that name is north of here, in a much less desirable locality, 
not on a cape at all — hence, in our American way, its name. 

" On the point of the Cape a few Presbyterian gentlemen and capitalists 
have laid out in noble style a small town, building, as their forefathers 
in the faith in New England did, a church first, and then, as the pilgrim 
fathers did not, a comfortable hotel, with modern improvements, next! 
Nor this alone, but they have leveled the sand banks, improved the 
shores of a small fresh-water lake, and multiplied streets, roads, ave- 
nues, and boulevards in every direction. Eine cottages have been 
erected, and the place is rapidly developing characteristics of material 
order and beauty. 



DISINTERESTED EVIDENCE. pi 

"The Abraham, the Moses, the Solomon of this enterprise is Alex- 
ander Whilldin, Esq., a wealthy wool merchant of the city of Philadel- 
phia, in whose family the land hereabouts has been a legacy for genera- 
tions. Presbyterianism has descended in the same line as the property, 
but it must not be understood that the large fortune of Mr. W. was all 
inherited, or that he is of that class of men who accept their creeds 
ready-made from their ancestors. On the contrary, he is a thorough 
man of business, as liberal in his charities as thoughtfully tolerant in 
his adhesion to his sect. In association with him is the famous Napo- 
leon of clothiers, John Wanamaker, of the same city. Both these 
persons are remarkable in the same way — men whose broad views and 
ceaseless energies, coupled with catholic sympathies, make mere sec- 
tarianism seem impertinent, and exalt our conception of human nature 
as we observe their philanthropic activity and eminent public spirit. 

" The plan of this sea-side paradise, this New Jerusalem in the sand, 
as well as the public improvements, reflects credit upon the taste and 
skill of Mr. J. C. Sidney, another Philadelphian, and an architect of 
repute. Under his superintendence, backed by abundant means, the 
growth of this place has been exceedingly rapid, and yet substantial 
completeness is everywhere evident. 

" Under the favorable laws of this State (New Jersey), the regulations 
of this new town are as peculiar as the old Presbyterian Blue Laws 
of Connecticut ; in fact, they smack somewhat of their character. I 
should hesitate long before I consented to such laws for a State or large 
city, but here, and now, very possibly they are excellent ; anyway, those 
who disapprove can go to — Cape May, or even Long Branch, which is 
worse. 

" For my part I am glad to get to a place where rest and health and 
personal improvement seem really to be the object of those around 
me. I am rejoiced to be, even for a week, where my eyes are not 
offended by the emblazonry with which the rum traffic decorates so 
many fronts in town, and where the tippler tippleth not and the drunk- 
ard Cometh not. Continual swearing \m others) is not essential to my 
happiness, while slang and obscenity, such as I often hear in some re- 
sorts, make me crawl all over with disgust. Sea Grove has no rum 
traffic — never will have ; it has no scenes of riot, and moreover is clean 
and decent in every way. I don't know how rigid the regulations are, 
but I do know they will be enforced, whatever they may be; and that 
now the result is every way satisfactory if health and rest are really 
desired. 

" It seems queer to see the people of a hotel convene twice a day for 
family prayers, where various clergymen 'address the throne of grace,' 
and a fine quartette like this of the Hayes family leads the singing; 
yet such is the fashion here, and I, wishing to be in style, followed the 
fashion. I cannot detect any demoralization in myself in consequence 



92 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



of this self-indulgence, and if I think my own thoughts the while prayer 
and music go on, I do not think I am surrounded by a company of 
mere hypocrites and canting, pretentious formalists ! I am sure some 
people I know would be surprised to learn how much of real human 
goodness unspoiled there is in all the churches. The danger here seems 
to be that so much piety and propriety, 'taken straight,' may become 
dull from monotony, and so efforts have been made to avoid sanctimo- 
niousness. A very distinguished Presbyterian divine organized a 
minstrel troupe from the kitchen and the dining room, and they gave 
an entertainment. Then last evening there was in the parlor an exhi- 
bition of sleight-of-hand by * Professor Giieriiella and lady.' He belongs 
to the assumed exposers of Spiritualism, and I have to say that he 
was decent in his remarks and clever in his tricks, but his imitation was 
as much like spirit phenomena as the pantomime of the deaf and dumb 
is like the eloquence of Wendell Phillips; and so as before the facts of 
Spiritualism remain, as Gncrnclla says, to ' puzzle longer heads than 
mine.' 

" To-day, after the teachings of Guernella, that ' we should attribute 
nothing to supernatural causes because we don't understand it,' we had 
a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Nevins upon the stilling of the sea by 
Jesus. He took occasion to inculcate 'muscular Christianity,' saying 
salvation was incomplete without health, and that Jesus healed the sick. 
He then told us that the storm on Galilee was the work of demoniacal 
spirits, as were all storms, earthquakes, and other destructive outbreaks 
of nature ! It was cheap science, even if good theology ; anyhow, it 
showed Gncrnclla had not effaced the idea that somehow good or bad 
spirits had much to do with our life and its environment. Nevins is 
an elderly Presbyterian minister. To-night, at 5 o'clock, we listen to 
the Rev. Mr. Stockton, an PLpiscopalian of reform tendencies, but still 
in full communion. From conversation with him, I expect liberal 
things." 

Disagreeing radically and frankly with those around him, the writer 
of the above states, in the further course of his correspondence, that 
candor and courtesy were the only concessions made by him in frequent 
conversations and debates with both laymen and ministers; and yet he 
declares that nowhere was he ever so cheerfully tolerated, never treated 
with greater kindness, " not even in the radical Israel." 

§Such has been the course taken by the Presbyterian managers of 
Sea Grove, and such is the concurrent testimony of various parties as 
to the order, morality, and liberal tolerance of those who frccjucnt the 
place; yet there resides and rules the same Calvinism which was 
believed in by the Puritans, who sanctioned the death of dissenters in 
'England and Massachusetts a few generations ago. Since then, how 
much of growth in grace ! 

Divorced from the entanglements of state ecclesiasticism, the free 



^^♦4a"^ 







COXCLUSION OF THE HISTORIC ARGUMENT. ^3 

Prcsb}'terian Church, hkc oilier Christian or^^inizations, has escaped 
from potent influences of corruption and gained in spiritual life. De- 
livered from persecution, endowed with freedom, resting secure, that 
Church has outgrown the old-time Puritan arrogance, intolerance, and 
cruelty. This is not a change in Calvinism, but it is progress among 
men. It was not the creed, but the fears of the Puritans, which made 
them exclusive and proscriptive. 

The progress made manifest by the success of the Presbyterians in 
New Jersey has been shared by the Episcopalians of Virginia as well, 
and has extended to every Christian denomination in our country. It 
is the fruit of religious freedom, of security, prosperity, and culture; 
the expression of the spirit of the nineteenth century, the outgrowth 
of the republican institutions of the United States of America. 

" Calvinism ran to seed in Massachusetts," it is said ; its thorns it 
put forth in Europe in defiance — a defense against its persecutors. 
After two hundred years ot tolerance and liberty, it blooms at Sea 
Grove ; the humanities, the cour'.esies, the graces of life, blossom in 
beauty on the same rugged stock which so long has nourished the 
sterner virtues. 

Freedom is the natural basis of civilization, progress, and a true life. 
Religion needs no establishment except in the hearts of the devout. 
The only legitimate rule is the law of equal rights, "a government of 
the people, by the people, and for the people" — " never to perish from 
the earth." 

Such are our conclusions. Such the lesson of New Jersey and Sea 
Grove; the historic argument of Scheyichbi and the Str-^nd. 



GEOLOGICAL OUTLINES AND ITEMS. 



A FACT IN NATURE IS AN ACT OF GOD." 



The course of nature is the art of God." 



Young. 



Cape May Lighthouse is at the southern end of the State of New 
Jersey, and. according to the United States Coast Survey Reports, is in 

38° 55' 50" .42 north lati- 
tude, and in 74° 57' 15" 
.57 west longitude; high- 
water mark by the same 
observation was 11 88 feet 
due south of it, or in lati- 
tude 38° 55' 39". 65 north, 
and longitude 74° 57' 15" 
.57 west. The light is one 
hundred and sixty-seven 
and three-eighths miles 
from the northern limit of 
New Jersey, and between 
Delaware Bay and the At- 
lantic Ocean. Immediately 
west is located the settle- 
ment of Sea Grove, includ- 
ing the United States Signal 
Station at the extreme point 
of Cape May. Both the light 
and the settlement, as well 
as the long-famous resort of Cape May City, and the country thirty- 
two miles north, are included in Cape May County. 

Geologically, this county, in common with all the southern portion 
of the State, belongs to the Tertiary and recent formation of the Ceno- 
zoic period, and is characterized by deposit, drift, and alluvium. The 
whole county is very low, level, and uniform, and, in the absence of mines, 
quarries, or other deeo excavations, geological examinations have been 
94 




THE ANCIENT SHORES. ^5 

confined to the surface, and tlie deposit to the depth of three hundred 
and thirty-five feet beneath it. The best opportunities for observations 
have been afforded by the boring of several artesian wells at different 
points. 

§ Not very long ago — as time is counted in geology — tl>? ocean shore 
of Southern New Jersey extended from Trenton, on the D. 'aware, to 
Woodbridge, on Staten Island Sound, running nearly along the ^^resent 
railroad from Trenton to Metuchen, Middlesex County, and from thence 
eastward a short distance. This was the southern limit of the appear- 
ance of the red sandstone of the Triassic formation. All the land 
between there and Cape May, to a depth of about seven hundred and 
forty-two feet, in the Cretaceous formation, and one thousand or more 
deep the rest of the distance, has been "made" either by deposits from 
the sea and from vegetable growth, or by " drift" and wash of materials. 

The Cretaceous formation extends from the southern line of the 
Triassic southwardly about sixty miles along the Delaware as far as 
AUoway's Creek, Salem County, and from thence northeastwardly to 
Shark River Inlet, on the Atlantic coast, eight miles below Long 
Branch. Clayton Station, on the West Jersey Railroad from Philadel- 
phia to Cape May City and Sea Grove, is near the southern border of 
the Cretaceous formation. 

The Tertiary formation covers all the surface of Southern New Jersey 
south of the line from Shark River Inlet to AUoway's Creek, except a 
narrow margin of recent formation along the shores. Owing to the 
nature of their materials, and the agencies which have operated upon 
them through successive ages, it is very difficult to definitely outline 
the field of these two formations. The Tertiary overlies the Cretaceous 
in the north, and runs irregularly into the recent formation along the 
shore. 

Beyond the Cretaceous, to the north, appears the Triassic formation, 
composed of the red sandstones and others, the trap and conglomerate 
rocks. 

North of the Triassic rise the mountains which stretch across the 
State of New Jersey in its northwestern portion. These mountains 
are composed of gneiss rocks and crystalline limestone, or marble, but 
mostly of gneiss; these are the outcrop of the metamorphic rocks of 
the Azoic time, and are metamorphic, igneous, or primitive in character, 
— that is to say, they are geologically the most ancient rocks, and owe 
their character to the action of fire. The valleys among these mount- 
ains are limestone localities, and all the territory of New Jersey beyond 
the mountains to the northwest is a limestone region, and of the Paleozoic 
division of geologic structure and time. 

§ It being known that the metamorphic rocks of the Azoic period are 
primitive, igneous, or Plutonic rocks, it is understood that they are the 
oldest, and, if retained in place, would be the deepest buried, of all the 



96 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



strata, lying as an ever-shrinking shell of granite upon the fiery lava 
which forms the liquid pulpy heart of the globe. All the strata, were 
they " in place," would be piled one on another above this heated granite 
floor. First would come the Azoic or Metamorphic rocks; then the 
Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permean, Triassic, Jurassic, Creta- 
ceous, Tertiary, Post-Tertiary; and last and uppermost of all, the 
Recent formations. 

This would place Southern New Jersey geologically where some of 
its residents declare it is to be found in every respect, — "at the top of 
the heap ;" but, since the central fire of the planet first began to cool, 
and islands of red-hot stone floated upon the incandescent ocean, there 
has been many a commotion and violent shaking-up of things in this 
world, and geologists are not the only people who, in order to learn 
the truth, are compelled to follow with painstaking care the clue of fact 
through what seems a labyrinth of confusion before they catch a view 
of the system of nature, comprehend in part the laws of the universe, 
and realize with reverence the glory of the Infinite God ! 

The geologic strata are first formed, and then upheaved or depressed, 
crushed, crumpled, and distorted, disintegrated, mixed, and distributed, 
in a thousand ways and positions, by the action of known but incon- 
ceivable forces. The shrinkage of the earth's crust crowds up enormous 
ridges of granite or other rocks, which in cragged wedges slowly pierce 
upwards through the superincumbent mass, or else the crash of earth- 
quake explosions produces effects in a few moments otherwise the work 
of ages. The variations of condition and character thus introduced in 
the geologic elements by the causes described create an appearance of 
utter confusion bewildering to the uninformed and heedless. It seems 
to the superficial observer that the rocks and earths, the sands and the 
soils, are jumbled together without sequence or significance, and such 
persons, if induced to consider the subject at all, are inclined to surren- 
der the use of their senses and reason, and atone for tlieir imbecility and 
unf:iithfulness by the acceptance of some superstitious, heathenish, and 
wicked pretension of a revealed Cosmogony. Thus they give up the 
study, appalled by the difficulties which surround it, content to know 
no more scientifically of the wondrous world they mysteriously inhabit 
than did the saurian reptiles whose fossil remains enrich the marl beds 
and banks of fossil shells. Such a course is blindly impious, and dis- 
graceful to human nature. 

It is true the Bible asserts that God made the world, but it gives 
only the most exceeding vague intimation as to how or when the 
Creation announced was effected ; whatever may or may not be re- 
vealed in si)iritual things, we are left to study geology hammer in hand, 
knocking hard at the rocky doors of science. Yet we need not be dis- 
couraged nor afraid ; the difficult is not of necessity impossible, and 
although geology is an infant science compared to astronomy and 



SCIENCE AND TRUTH. 



97 



mathematics, and only a child beside even chemistry, yet the clue has 
been discovered, the system made plain, and only diligence and cour- 
age are required for the conquests of the future. The practical eco- 
nomic value of geology is immense, and besides, it must ever be a high 
gratification to read in the record of the rocks the history of the evo- 
lution and progressive development of our home, the earth. 

Tiiere is no danger the facts of Geology can annul, or even obscure, 
the truth of religion. Men of science are not always scientific, but 
while we trace the process by which that which is has been brought 
about, it need not be that we become process mad, and unable to see 
in and behind the unfolding the infinite spirit, which movc«5 in the 
wheels of existence. Here, are phenomena ; there, is law, process, and 
evolution; the spirit is everywhere, all in all. There is no pebble so 
small but lazu constrains it, no material so inert but evolution compels 
its progress; the smallest grain of sand has being in an infinite order; 
omnipotence overtops the loftiest crag, underlies the deepest primitive 
strata, and sustains the central fire. Facts cannot disprove truth ; the 
idea of God science can displace from the minds of candid and tho- 
rough students is but the myth of morbid imagination, the shadow of 
the fetich of barbarian ignorance. 

§ New Jersey contains the out-crops of all the geologic formations 
except, unfortunately, the carboniferous. In the absence of the coal- 
bearing strata there are, however, other rich and rare mines and de- 
posits in the State, notably those of zinc; as well as an abundance of 
iron, of lime, of valuable clays, of building materials, and natural fer- 
tilizers. The remarkable geologic characteristics which have marked 
the region, are the evident recurrent upliftings and subsidences of a 
large part of the surface, and the effects of denudation and drift. 

The Cretaceous formation of New Jersey, which with the Tertiary 
covers the whole southern part of the State, was once the bottom of a 
shallow and quiet ocean; it is evident from its stratification that the 
surface of the land rose and fell with comparative regularity, so that 
the sea would advance at times and cover it, and then the bottom 
would be uplifted and the .sea recede. Vegetation would .start up upon 
the marshes and upland, which would after a time by subsidence of 
the land be overwhelmed in the waves, and then buried by degrees in 
the sea sediment. 

In proof of all this, the immense quantities of fossil shells in this 
formation are found unbroken, and the bones of reptiles lying together 
undisturbed near where they lived and died ; this would not be the 
ca.se if the sea which covered them had been turbulent and stormy. 
That marine shells and sea sediments are found both above and brlow 
various beds or layers of vegetable fossils and the bones of land rep- 
tiles shows that alternately the land was submerged, and then for an 
a^ie emerged from the waters. Yet all this time the land must have 



98 



SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 



been subsiding on the whole ; for a regular stratified formation some 
eight hundred feet thick was thus aggregated, and the topmost layer 
of shells was of course under the tide when it grew. This subsidence 
was followed by an elevation of the whole coast to about four hundred 
feet above the level of the sea, which was effected bodily; but the up- 
lift seems to have been greatest in the northwest, so that the strata 
slope or " dip" toward the southeast at present. This upheaval was 
before the " drift period." When it came, the process of denudation 
reduced the land to nearly its present level and configuration. 

The name of the Cretaceous formation is derived from England, and 
is significant of the great amount of chalk which characterizes it. The 
constituents of the formation in New Jersey are all earthy, except 
where in a few detached spots the material has become cemented by 
oxide of iron into a kind of sandstone or conglomerate. The strata 
are the upper marl bed, the yellow sand ; the middle marl bed, the 
red sand ; the lower marl bed, clay marls, and plastic clay. These 
last are of fresh-water origin, and are supposed to have originated from, 
the decomposition of gneiss rock; they are the underlying strata when 
in place, but in actual situation crop out on the surface on the northern 
edge of the formation at Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, South Amboy, 
Washington, and Trenton ; they are also used as potters' clay at sev- 
eral other places. 

The other strata came to the surface one after another as distance 
increases towards the south, until at the commencement of the Tertiary 
formation the upper marl beds appear while the other strata are mostly 
subterranean. 

Next to the evidences of denudation and drift presented by the sur- 
face of the Cretaceous district, the vast quantities of fossil shells and 
bones are remarkable. The shells of the clay beds are of fresh- water 
origin (such as the genus U)iio, as fresh-water mussel and others), 
and may have grown at the bottom of lakes before the subsidence, 
or the fresh water may have been kept from the sea by hills and ridges. 
The green sand which abounds in the Cretaceous formation is sup- 
posed to have become granulated by forming inside very small shells, 
and is of chemical origin, and evidently a deposit from salt water, as 
the vast amount of fossil marine shells contained in it demonstrates. 

One species of these shells, the Tcrclnxtitla Harlaui, forms a layer 
ninety miles long, over a mile wide, and about a }'ard in thickness in 
the middle marl bed. This layer is made up almost entirely of this 
species, of shell, closely packed together. Immediately beneath the 
Tcrcbatitla Harlaiii shell layer is another equally large, made up of 
shells of the Pycnodonta convcxa. Many other kinds of shells exist 'in 
great quantities in the Cretaceous formation at various places. Of 
these over three hundred varieties have been classified and described, 
with no certainty that the work is complete. In some marl beds a 



FIRST USE OF THE MARL. ^^ 

dozen or twenty varieties might be found in comparatively small space, 
and then again, as before described, beds of one kind of shells, a mile 
wide and several feet thick, are scores of miles in length. 

The plastic cla}'s of the Cretaceous formation of New Jersey are 
highly valuable to the potter and to the maker of fire-brick ; the com- 
mon clays are useful too for ordinary brick-making ; the gneiss of the 
Azoic formation, and the red sandstone or " brown stone" of the 
Triassic strata, and, very generally, the various colored limestones of 
the Paleozoic district of the State, are used in building ; the brown sand- 
stone of southern New Jersey serves the same purpose. The Triassic 
trap rock and sandstone is used in paving, and its slates for roofing. 
Iron and zinc mines are very rich in New Jersey, the iron produced 
being of the best; the zinc ore is generally rare elsewhere, yet ten 
years ago twenty- five thousand tons of it were dug yearly in Sussex 
County. This ore yielded seven thousand tons of "zinc white," and 
five hundred tons of metallic zinc; this was seven-tenths of all the zinc 
white manufactured in the United States, and about one-fourth of all 
the spelter produced. Yet it is probable the marl beds of the Creta- 
ceous formation, used alone as fertilizers, or in combination with its 
shell and stone lime, and the muck and peats of the region, are or 
might be made worth more than all the quarries and mines within the 
Commonwealth. 

The green sand marl was first used as a fertilizer, in Monmouth 
County, in 1768, when "an Irishman" ditching for Peter Schenck 
" threw out a substance he called ' marl.' " It was spread over an acre 
and a half of land, where its good effects were visible for many years; 
" but," says the record, " this circumstance attracted no particular 
notice until 181 1, when the farm came into the possession of John II. 
Smock ;" then notice was taken of the effect of the marl, and the use 
of it began in the neighborhood. It had been used somewhat at that 
time in other places, but at no place in this country was the use of 
marl general before the present century began. 

The discovery and use of the marl have raised thousands of acres of 
lands from sheer barrenness to remarkable fertility ; worn-out farms, 
where a family could not be supported, are now making their culti- 
vators rich by their productiveness. Bare sands are made to grow 
clover, and then crops of corn, potatoes, and wheat. " Pine barrens," 
by the use of marl, have been made into fruitful lands, and thus whole 
districts have been saved from depopulation, and the inhabitants of 
others increased. 

Fifty-five years ago the six southern counties of New Jersey were 
described by Morse as four-fifths waste and barren land; this consti- 
tuted two-fifths of the entire State: now, large portions of this desert 
are under high and profitable culture, and the land in farms in the six 
southern counties is worth an average of over fifty dollars an acre. 



lOO SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 

The Irishman who spread the first marl in New Jersey deserved more 
honor than many a conquering warrior ; a monument erected to his 
memory would be more in keeping than to have him referred to in the 
State Geologist's Report merely as "an Irishman!" 

In the marl-beds of the Cretaceous formation are abundant and 
extraordinary remains of extinct reptiles. They were of the orders 
Thecodon'tia, Sauropterygia, Testudinata, Crocodilia, and Dino- 
SAURIA, A fine specimen of the last order is preserved in the Museum 
of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, and is classified 
as the HadrosaiiTus Foulkii. It was a gigantic reptile, about twenty- 
eight feet long. The hind legs were very long, more than double the 
length of the fore limbs. The reptile walked on his hind legs as a 
man uses his legs, and ate foliage and vegetable food. It was a heavy 
unwieldy monster, living on land or in the marshes. 

There were carnivorous reptiles also, some of them forty feet long, 
some only about twenty-five feet long, with a body as large round as 
an ox, and a long neck. These steered themselves by flippers like 
those of a whale, and propelled themselves by their tails. Some of 
them had flattened tails, and sculled themselves along as a boatman 
uses a single oar ; some of them had great conical teetli : they ate fish 
probably; such were the Cimoliasaurus, the Elasmosaurus, the Mosa- 
saurus, and the Clidastes; the last, however, was more serpent-like, 
and fifteen feet long. 

There have been more than twenty kinds of Tortoises, Turtles, or 
Terrapin found. One of them, the Eiiclastcs, was full six feet long, and 
very strongly constructed. Others were as large, and some had ex- 
ceedingly thick shells, notably the Adoctis Pctrosiis and Adocus Firmus. 
The Crocodiles, Alligators, and Gavials were very numerous ; three- 
fourths of the bones found are of this order, and the wonder is what 
such swarms of them lived on, as they have left no remains of their 
feasts to tell the story so far as yet seen. These horrid brutes were 
twenty feet long in some cases, but they varied in size, some being 
four feet long only. 

The Dinosauria, of which order is the Hadrosaurus Foulkii, were the 
highest order of reptiles, and in some characteristics resembled birds. 
Many of them were as large as Mastodons and Elephants. Some of 
them squatted; some jumped like the Kangaroo; some, with great 
long legs, stalked around flopping their half-useless arms, and over- 
looking the levels with bird-like eyes set in a " bony visage," as if their 
face was trying to become a beak ! 

Such were the monsters of the Cretaceous land, such the shells once 
alive, when it was under the sea. These reptiles, and the vegetable 
remains in conjunction with them, indicate a torrid climate; but the 
bones of IValrus have been found in the neighborhood of Long Branch, 
and it is otherwise evident that their long summer was, in the " drift 



DENUDATION AND DRIFT. 10 1 

period." turned, and perhaps suddenly, too, into an equally long and 
appalling winter. 

§ The phenomenal efifects of Denudation and Drift are not confined to 
any geologic formation or geographic locality, but may be observed 
throughout many extensive sections, and indicate the force of several 
agents acting at separate times upon diversified materials in different 
directions, and by various modes and in distinct degrees. These agents 
are evidently three, — wind, water, and ice, — and the mode of action by 
each is unlike. Exposure to the heat of the sun and the effects of cold 
and frost disintegrates the rocks and subjects them to the effect of drift- 
creating forces. The common variations of climate and season are 
efficient in this respect, but special causes in different ages have vastly 
intensified the influences of temperature and weather. 

The influence of wind and of water is constant ; but the vast effects 
of the ice-drift are referable to the geologic " Drift Period." The force 
of wind is active not alone in wearing away rocks, by whirling grit and 
transporting great quantities of. sand, and building dunes and beaches 
along low shores, but in some places it wafts the sands of shores and 
deserts far over fertile fields and even forest hills, thus sadly increasing 
the -area of sterility. In the African deserts the awful simoom blights 
vegetable growth and suffocates animals and men, then lets fall over 
the dead caravan thick layers and hills of sand for their winding-sheet 
and grave. 

On the Western American plains, and among the mountains of that 
region, the winds have cut countless cavities into solid stone; these 
cuttings vary from small orifices and hollows to large channels and 
openings; in fact, in some localities the most of the strata has been 
worn away, and only small isolated elevations of fantastic form remain 
to denote the former level of the surrounding territory. On loose sand 
the operation of wind is obvious: the finer earth and dust is lifted and 
bodily conveyed to a distance in proportion to the strength of the blast, 
while the coarser sand and gravel is rolled, slid, and drifted along the 
surface, often up steep inclines and considerable elevations. 

As a gale grows in violence, the power of wind increases in the same 
degree to an unknown limit: typhoons and c\'clones exhibit its force 
in Indian seas, the West Indies are often devastated by hurricanes, and 
in portions of the United States whirlwinds and tornadoes sometimes 
level giant forests in their path, demolish strong buildings, and hurl the 
ruins far through the air. A hurricane in the West Indies broke down 
a very heavy wall, and rolled stones weighing hundreds of pounds along 
the ground ! 

Bv forcing a blast of air through a nozzle, and charging it with sand, 
made to impinge upon flint glass, artisans abrade, cut, gruid, and en- 
grave the glass most rapidly. In a similar way, the wind, forcing itself 
through rocky canyons, notches, passes, defiles, fissures, and crevices 



102 SCHEVICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

among the mountains, and sweeping over rainless plains, takes up the 
gritty debris and sharp sand and, whirling them along, drives them in 
an enormous rotating sand-blast against the rocks. Gneiss and adamant 
could not resist the impact and continued friction. 

The effects of water and ice in the Drift Period have been closely 
studied and elaborately stated by the geologists, but it is possible the 
effects of winds have not been as fully observed and noted. By some 
commentators it is supposed that the destruction of the Assyrians 
(II. Kings, 35) was accomplished through the agency of a simoom, 
which certainly would be a sufficient natural cause for the death of 
even that host. However it may have been in this case, there is evi- 
dence throughout the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, but 
not confined to the Bible or any book, of the power of spiritual beings 
who, under Providence, use the forces of nature as their instruments to 
do the will of Heaven. No marvelous work is belittled or made less 
wonderful because we are enabled to discern the agencies and the 
method by and through which the Eternal Power is made manifest. 

The evidence of the former submergence of vast areas which are now 
the elevated portions of continents, and of tremendous floods which 
have deluged the surface since it has been uplifted, appears almost 
everywhere, and seems to be amply convincing : tradition among 
savages, and the poems and mythological records of many races, refer 
to such phenomena, ascribing them generally to the action of the gods. 
The Bible account of the deluge, it is thought by some, finds corrobo- 
ration in these legends and poetical allegories of antiquity. Certain it 
is that water, in showers, floods, and oceans, has been the potent cause 
of distribution and change in geologic materials. When porous stones 
are exposed to rain and severe frost, they rapidly disorganize : the 
water penetrates the pores of the stone and is frozen there, the expan- 
sion of water changing to ice bursts the cells of the stone by the exertion 
of one of the most potent natural forces, and the rock soon crumbles 
from the effect of such weathering. Some rocks, when submerged or 
long subjected to the action of water, become " rotten stone," the 
cementing material in their composition being oxidized or dissolved 
away. In turbulent torrents the stones are dashed against each other 
and broken, they are ground together and pulverized, and, after tritura- 
tion, are borne away to form the sediment of quieter waters. Thus the 
winds, the rains, the streams, and the waves co-operate, and through 
their action, in time, the rocky mountains are reduced to a bed of sand, 
to be drifted about by every flood or borne away before the wind. 

The influence of changing weather and seasons is incessant: every 
warm day, every wandering wind, every passing shower, is active in 
changing the surface of the earth, while geologic indications prove that 
not only have icy oceans rolled over what are now the mountain-tops 
of temperate climes, but glai:ier-like formations of ice, during the winter 



THE EFFECT OF THE DIUFT. 



10- 



ages, crept down from the pole, submerging tlie life of the zone beneath 
a curtain of frozen death. Gripping inimensc boulders of flinty rock in 
their icy flow, the frigid seas dragged them for hundreds of miles, firm 
fixed in the icebergs as a glazier's diamond in steel. Grinding heavily 
on the bottom of shallow seas, these enormous tools in the hands of 
Nature have scratched and scored the granite mountains, the trap 
dikes, and the various ridges, until they have, in some cases, been 
utterly worn away under the long-continued and terrific abrasion and 
their debris scattered far and wide. From astronomical causes diver- 
gences are supposed to occur in the polarities of the earth, producing 
excessive and sudden but persistent changes in climate, or, as is known, 
comparatively slight deflections of constant winds and currents grad- 
ually bring about the same result. In the far north mastodons by 
thousands are to be found imbedfjed in ice, where and as they stood 
when the torrid climate congenial to them passed away at once, and 
paralyzing frost and overwhelming snow descending upon them estab- 
lished most abruptly the conditions of Arctic winter. 

§ The Drift of New Jersey indicates not only a grand movement of 
the agencies of denudation from the northwest, but counter, or rather 
divergent, currents of a similar nature, due to local elevations or other 
secondary causes; the main line of advance however being toward the 
southeast. 

The Paleozoic formation to the northwest of the mountains was of 
course the first affected by the southward tending drift. The amount 
of material displaced is almost incredible. One body of drift in the 
Paleozoic district is one hundred miles or more long, from ten to fifty 
miles wide, and two to three thousand feet in depth. 

The drift action in the Azoic formation has also been immense, and 
the evidence of it is to be seen not only among the gneiss-crowned 
mountains, but all over the State, as the disintegrated granite appears 
everywhere in almost every foot of gravel bed. On the lower margin 
or southern border of the Triassic formation a belt of gneiss rock is 
exposed ; this was drift from Azoic outcrops in the mountains, and has 
aggregated in its present place and concreted into stone, and then again 
has been in part abraded, disintegrated, and carried away. The most 
common soil of the Azoic formation is drift, deposited among the 
eneiss rocks and mountain ranjres. There are limestone boulders in 
the neighborhood of the gneiss which weigh two thousand tons each, 
and which have drifted a mile at least, and perhaps several miles, and 
have been lifted one or two hundred feet. On Sparta mountain, twelve 
hundred feet above the sea, are found boulders which weigh a hundred 
tons, which have been carried there from an unknown distance. Boul- 
ders of ore have been carried into distant deposits far from the original 
strata, and have misled those who found them into the idea that iluy 
were indications of mines in the place where they were discovered. 



104 SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 

It is in the Triassic formation, however, that the greatest signs of 
drift action appear ; there the red sandstone has in many places been 
worn away from two to five hundred feet. The Newark marshes have 
been dug out by drift action, and the excavation was carried below the 
level of the sea, resulting in bays now but partly filled by mud, grass, 
roots, etc., etc. Boulders of various kinds appear in this formation. 
There is a boulder of five hundred tons' weight on the northwest slope 
of First Mountain, near the Newark and Mount Pleasant turnpike, 
which has been carried by the drift current full thirteen miles. There 
is another boulder near Woodbridge, more than twenty miles from its 
parent strata, which must weigh two hundred and fifty tons. There 
are trap and sandstone boulders everywhere in the Triassic formation, 
and considerable deposits of limestone in loose masses. Paleozoic fos- 
sils are also found scattered with the drift into Triassic beds. 

The Cretaceous formation has been worn away and changed by denu- 
dation nearly as much as the Triassic strata; Naversink Highlands, 
and the Mount Pleasant Hills of Monmouth County, have perfect sea- 
shore pebbles upon their summits ; yet they are about four hundred feet 
high, their valleys being one hundred feet above the sea-level. In the 
Cretaceous beds and layers, the forces of the drift encountered only 
friable materials, as the stratification was comparatively recent, and the 
elevation referred to in a former page still later ; hence, when these 
forces became active among the shell layers and the loose sands which 
had been imported from other formations and not concreted, the uni- 
form surface of the u[)lifted land was worn into valleys, or washed away 
entirely for large areas, to the depth of three or four hundred feet. 

Thus were created the broad low plains now visible in South Jersey, 
and the low hills with their shallow valleys between them, which there 
mark the Cretaceous area. The sides of these hills, and the bottoms of 
the valleys, afford excellent opportunities for geologic observation. 
The sand, loam, and general mass of material dislodged, was carried 
away toward the south. The drift action continued a long time, and 
thus were the abraded constituents of all the strata to the north mixed 
with the materials of the Cretaceous sediment, swept out to sea and 
deposited there, creating the Tertiary formation. 

That extensive areas should rise and fall, and even " the sit-fast and 
immovable hills" appear and disappear, grow and waste away, seems 
incredible to the untaught, and is wonderful to all ; and yet in geologic 
ages continents emerge from the sea and then sink again beneath the 
ocean ; Himalayas, Alps, Andes, and Sierras swell aloft by the action 
of geologic forces, and then subside into the subterranean, or are sculp- 
tured into picturesque forms and worn away by dcnudatioti. 

Geology gives time; and in time, the sun, the rain, the wind, and the 
frost, as has been demonstrated, will humble the head of the hii^hest 
mountain that lifts its granite top above the clouds I Then again by 



THE EARLILST LIFE ON EARTH. 105 

Sitddcn or by gradual sliiftings of tlic balance and polarities of the earth, 
tremendous and sometimes abrupt changes of climate have been in- 
duced, and vast floods and moving fields of ice have been the conse- 
quence. These awful forces, tji tunc, work out the grandest results and 
most radical changes. 

The whole solid crust of the earth, moreover, is no thicker in com- 
parison to its liquid, fiery mass than the shell of an egg to its contents ; 
therefore any changes ot the surface are not unnatural, or, in view of the 
facts, a matter of amazement. The perpetual miracle and admirable 
wonder is that, with such forces always in action in some form, the uni- 
versal equipoise is maintained, and the conditions of human life and 
happiness evolved, with Infinite wisdom, from the perturbations of 
nature ! 

§ Formerly, the names of Primitive, Transition, Secondary, and 
Tertiary, were applied to various kinds of rocks, in geological classifi- 
cartion ; modern usage substitutes the technical terms of Azoic, Paleo- 
zoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic, to define periods marked by peculiar 
stratifications and fossils. The rocks themselves are now called Meta- 
morphic, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, 
Cretaceous, and Teitiary; the last significator being retained and 
adopted from the old terminology; besides, the phrase Post Tertiary is 
used, meaning since the Ternary. 

The rocks are named with regard to their constituents and character, 
or derive their titles from 'geographic localities where they especially 
abound, or where they were first scientifically observed. The Azoic 
rocks are supposed to have been formed before vegetable or animal life 
existed on this planet, and until the last few years it was sujiposed that 
no form of life was known below the lower Silurian rocks, that is to 
say, in Azoic time, before the Paleozoic period. American geologists 
are disposed to admit that the recently investigated "eozoon" found 
below the Silurian is the fossil of an animal form ; if they are right, 
the history of life on earth must be antedated, and carried back very 
far in time, and an Eozoonic age be recognized between the Azoic 
and Silurian. 

The Paleozoic period was the age of Mollusks or shell-fish, and their 
fossil remains abound in the limestones of the Silurian division. The 
Devonian sandstones and shales contain shells and the fossil remains 
of vertebrate fishes. The Carboniferous division of the Paleozoic time 
has no place in the geology of New Jersey, it is exceedingly develoj^ed 
in Pennsylvanian coal measures ; in its time land plants flourished 
beyond comparison; these fossil plants are coal at present. In the 
Triassic, the Jurassic, and Cretaceous divisions of the Mesozoic time 
there was an enormous development of Reptilian life, and the bones of 
monster reptiles are plentifully found as fossils in the rocks of those 
layers. The Mammals, which are warm-blooded quadrupeds, appear 



I06 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

as fossils first in the Tertiary rocks and strata, and the human period, 
the time in which man has inhabited the earth, is included in the Post 
Tertiary. 

The divisions of the Tertiary formation are the Eocene, the Miocene, 
the Pliocene, and the Post Pliocene, including the recent ; in New Jersey 
it constitutes the formation of the territory south of the Cretaceous 
strata, being bounded on the north by an irregular line from Shark 
River to AUoway's Creek. The Recent formation lies along the sea- 
shore and the banks of various streams, and generally includes all lands 
less than twelve feet above the level of the tide. 

None of the boundaries of the Tertiary fields are sharply defined 
like those of the rocky strata; the drift and wash has intermixed the 
materials of the formation, merging the outlines of the various beds 
and layers. Though the earthy nature of the Tertiary formation sub- 
jects its surface to change from storms and streams, by which the beds 
are mixed together or discolored, yet the mineral substances therein 
are undisturbed in their original places of deposit and not petrified, 
while even the lowest Tertiary strata contain fossils of existing species, 
proving the modern origin of the whole. The upper marl bed is in 
the Eocene division of the Tertiary formation, and is the lowest layer 
of its stratification. 

In a well bored at Winslow, Camden County, New Jersey, there was 
found : 

First 5 feet of surface earth. 
Then — 15 feet blue and black clay, 
95 " glass sand. 
35 " miocene clay, 
107 " micaceous sand. 
43 " brown clay. 
A gum log one foot thick. ( ! ) 
20 feet green sand, marl, white shells, teeth, etc. 
15 " pure green sand. 
At which point water rose from the bottom of the green sand. This 
gives a good general idea of the structure of the Tertiary formation in 
New Jersey. 

Loamy clay, white quartz pebbles, silicified fossils, feldspathic rock, 
etc., intermixed with sand, the materials of the drift, overlie the other 
beds unless the surfiice has been washed away. This drift varies much 
in constituency from pure clay to clean sand ; it is generally reddish 
yellow from oxide of iron, often fertile and retentive as a soil, and 
makes good roads, packing into a solid, smooth, durable bed, even 
when spread over loose sand. The excellence of the road-bed of the 
avenues of Sea Grove is due to the liberal use of this material upon 
them. 

The glass sand underlies the drift gravel to the depth of ninety-five 



FORMATION OF THE STRAND. 



107 



feet, and is pure white quartzose sand, except when it comes to the surface 
or at the bottom of the bed in places, then it is sometimes discolored. 
Its use in glass-making is very common and important, and this sec- 
tion, from which much glass sand is now shipped, contains enough of 
this valuable material to supply the world for a thousand ages ! The 
sandy plains of South Jersey are the exposures of this bed of sand 
where the drift gravel has been washed away. 

The Miocene clays and marls of South Jersey, so largely and suc- 
cessfully dug as fertilizers, contain numerous fossils, and are a source 
of wealth as well as a matter of geologic interest. The Micaceous 
sand, one hundred and seventeen feet deep, found in the well at Win- 
slow, does not crop out at the surface anywhere, and is in place below 
the sea level. The same is true of the brown clay found as described. 

Thus the layers of the Tertiary were formed, being deposited as 
drift from the more ancient strata. Mixed with the Tertiary layers, or 
distributed through them, may be found constituents of all the older 
formations in the State; thus thrown together, they have, by chemical 
action and reaction upon one another, entered into new combinations 
and produced new substances ; these in turn, with all the rest, sub- 
jected for thousands of years to the play of elementary forces, have 
been variously manipulated and chemicalized continually, while all the 
time impelled by the floods and streams toward the sea, along whose 
shallow margin they have been deposited, forming in " Recent" ages 
still another new shore to the ceaseless waves. 

§ As the Tertiary formation is marked by drift and earthy deposit, 
so alluvium characterizes its Recent division. In the Tertiary we find 
clay, sand, gravel, loose pebbles, and some boulders, most of which arc 
from distant strata; the beds of the Recent are made up of finer 
sands and clays, loams, mud, peat, etc., derived from adjacent deposits 
or the remains of vegetable production. The fossils of the Recent are 
all identical with existing species ; among them human remains and 
relics are frequent. The Recent formation in New Jersey borders tiie 
Atlantic from Sandy Hook to Cape May, and forms the shore of Del- 
aware Bay up to Salem, also the banks of some of the rivers and 
creeks. The sand beaches, the marshes, the cedar swamps, and an in- 
definite amount of upland border in the State are recognized as being 
included in this formation, and are in process of formation and change. 
The general surface soil of the upland border is a fine sandy loam with 
but little gravel, and contains organic matter enough to render it pro- 
ductive and fertile ground. An example of such border land is to be 
seen adjoining Sea Grove, and forms the Stitcs farm. The farm has 
been for some time occupied by the Hon. Downes ICdmunds, and has 
been worked in places constantly and successfully for a hundred or 
more years without any manure or dressing whatever, and yet has not 
been at all impoverished. The land thus cultivated is so full of shells 



I08 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

in spots as to make ploughing difficult ; the sub-soil is a deep, black, 
sandy mould. 

The tide marshes of the Recent formation of New Jersey are a re- 
markable feature; there are about three hundred thousand acres of 
such marshes in the State, and Cape May County alone, with a total 
area of one hundred and seventy thousand one hundred and seventy- 
one acres, has fifty-eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-four acres 
of tide marsh, including ten thousand four hundred and forty-three 
acres of sounds, bays, inlets, etc. The marshes are but little above 
ordinary tide level, and covered with grass, reeds, and coarse sedge, 
but treeless. Beneath the surface of the marsh there is from a yard 
to forty feet of nmd or soft earth, with an average depth of twenty feet. 
The marsh is deepest back from the beach and from the banks of 
streams, water-courses, etc. The body of the marsh is merely a bed 
of fibrous roots; near the beach, sand is intermixed with the roots, and 
along the streams and water-courses mud has been deposited, and is 
retained among them. 

The marshes enlarge by encroachment in places upon the wooded 
upland, and by growing into the sounds and waters they enclose ; at 
the same time the sea and bay have during the last century cut away 
many acres of the marshes, which have become exposed to the waves 
by the demolition and shifting of the sand dunes and beaches. The 
surface of the marsh, when enclosed by beaches, or by the clayey banks 
of streams, sinks slowly, by the decay and compression of the fibrous 
mass of which it is mostly composed. The wash of streams and the 
drift of the sea sand landward tends to solidify the marsh, as vege- 
table growth and deposit elevates the surface; however, shutting the 
water off from a true marsh causes it to sink, as it is really afloat, 
in and through the water, and it is so unsubstantial that many cubic feet 
of it when burned make but a very small quantity of ashes ; the marsh 
is, in fact, a sound or cove choked full of fibrous roots and vegetable 
deposit. Many hundreds of acres of that which was cedar swamp is 
now salt or tide marsh ; the trees having been killed by the encroach- 
ment of the sea water, have fallen, and are now buried, but undecayed, 
in the deep mud, the surface growth flourishing evenly above them, 

§ In treating of the Cretaceous formation, on a former page, it was 
stated that alternate elevations and depressions of the shore line had 
taken place, until finally, before the drift period, the surface of the 
whole formation was lifted several hundred feet above the sea, from 
which it has been degraded by denudation and drift down to its 
present level and configuration. It can be readily and definitely shown 
that similar but less extensive fluctuations have taken place in the 
Tertiary and Recent formations and are now operative along the present 
shores. How far inland the action may reach, or in what degree affect 
the interior, \ii more difficult to decide. 



ALTITUDE OF CAPE MAY COUNTY. 



109 



In various elevated positions in the Recent formation marine shells 
of the common species, or casts of them, arc to be seen in their natural 
attitude; on the banks of Maurice River, at Tuckahoe, and elsewhere 
along shore, they lie from eight to twelve feet above high-water mark, 
and indicate an elevation before the depression now going on; and as 
the amount of subsidence at present is about seventeen feet on an 
average, as estimated by measurement from tide level to the lowest 
points where buried and submerged trees are found in the places in 
which they grew, the former elevation must have raised the surface 
from twenty-five to thirty feet. 

The highest land of Cape May County is but about forty feet above 
the level of the sea, and that only at a few points of very limited extent, 
the average elevation being but eleven feet; so that when the shells 
now from eight to twelve feet above tide mark were at the level in 
which they grew, the greater part of Cape May County must have 
been submerged. The last elevation carried the shore line at least 
seventeen feet above where it now is. 

The operations of the Sea Grove Association in clearing and grading 
the remarkable sea-side resort they have so well begun, have obliterated 
some of the most interesting and characteristic traces of geologic action 
to be found in the State. Between the gateway of Sea Grove and the 
bay, and lying along the shore, were formerly a number of well- 
defined parallel ridges of drift sand. These were the evidence of a 
former uprising of the shore, and of the consequent receding of the 
water of the sea, which must have washed the gravel bank or fast 
land ; the ridges were created, one behind another, by the wind, which, 
blowing across the ancient strand, would raise the innermost ridge 
first, and then, as the shore widened toward the sea, another between 
it and the water, and so on. 

The beach ridges, having been formed long since, were covered with 
a heavy growth of black oak timber, which has been in part removed 
by the Sea Grove improvements ; the parallel ridges have ceased to 
advance seaward, but Mr. Alexander VVhilldin, a close observer, affirms 
that at present Cape May Point is growing out into Delaware Bay, by 
the deposition of sand upon it from the ocean front, and by the action 
of the wind piling up dunes or sand-hillocks. 

Almost entirely along the shore of New Jersey, the main or " fast 
land" is separated from the sea by salt marshes of three miles or 
less in width; outside of these, next the sea, occurs a row of long, 
narrow, somewhat elevated, and more or less wooded islands, or 
"beaches." These are the Old beaches; they are more ancient than 
the marsh, and are supposed to have been formed during a former 
period of depression. The waves beating upon a friable shore of earth 
and sand, such as then existed, would wear a channel next tlie shore, 
and pile up a shoal outside the surf; a scries of such shoals would 

8 



no SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

thus be formed parallel to one another, and when the next elevation 
occurred they would appear above water, and form the basis of the 
present beaches. Shrubs and trees would soon grow upon these 
ridges, saving them from drifting away, and causing them to retain 
all the sand the wind blew from the strand upon them. The lower 
grounds between the ridges would finally rise above water, and pres- 
ently become covered with vegetation, until a subsequent depression 
again carried them below tide level, when they would become salt 
marshes, filling with mud by the action of the tides, and keeping their 
surface at high-water mark, by the growth of peat, just as one hun- 
dred and seventy-eight thousand two hundred and forty-wo acres 
of such formation, lying all the way from Long Branch southward 
along the shore to Cape May, are now doing. 

Fresh marshes form in the broad shallow valleys of the slow- 
moving rivers and creeks of South Jersey ; as at Tuckahoe, and on 
Great Egg Harbor Rivers. The salt marshes on Delaware Bay shore 
have been formed as fresh marshes in the valleys of the streams which 
flow through them to the bay, and are supposed to hav^e had beaches 
between them and the bay, which have gradually been washed away; 
in the same way a large portion of the marsh itself has gone. 

§ The landward beaches which join the marsh are developed in long, 
parallel lines, and, where the timber has not been removed, are covered 
with a very old growth of it ; the open spaces in the depressions 
between the beaches are called savannas ; in wet seasons they are 
saturated or more or less covered and filled with fresh water; they 
are then called slashes, and are the haunts of numerous water-fowl 
and game-birds, which makes them favorite resorts of discriminating 
sportsmen. 

The Old beach ridges are not over a rod in width, and not more 
than five or six feet high ; yet they, with the savannas beside them, 
may be a mile or two long. The Old beaches contain a small portion 
of clay with their sand, which partly saves them from drifting with 
the wind, and [)romotes the growth of the timber. The Old beach 
varies in height, increasing in elevation toward the sea; part of the 
low landward ridges have become submerged, and yet can be traced 
in places by the lines of dead trees standing in the marsh. 

At Sea Grove the marsh disappears from the Delaware Bay front, 
and the Old beach has formed back directly over the marsh or against 
and upon the upland. Lily Pond, or Lake Lily as it is now called, 
occupies the place of what might be a marsh, and yet is a fresh-water 
pond, from which water was formerly taken for shipping. 

The water of Lake Lily had connection with the sea by a water-course 
which ran from the shoreward end of the lake, between the strand and 
the lighthouse, and along the foot of the upland, to the west of Cape 
Island, and so into Skillinger's Creek and under the bridge to Cape Island 



DESCRIPTION OF LAKE LIL V. 1 1 1 

Sound, and out by Cold Spring Inlet to the Atlantic. Now the sand 
drift has filled and covered the water-course near the lighthouse, and 
the Sea Grove Association have obliterated the natural features of the 
lake. In their zeal for improvement they have detracted very much 
from the scientific interest and value of the original pond, which is less 
to be regretted however, as there are enough indications all around of 
the same purport, and the engineers, by grading the shore of the pond 
to a fine drive, putting up ornate boat-houses, etc., have succeeded in 
making a very pretty miniature lake of what was a somewhat unsightly 
even if pure and interesting sheet of fresh water. 

Since its improvement as above stated, Lake Lily has become one 
of the attractions of attractive Sea Grove, and is a great addition to the 
pleasure of visitors. When the water-course referred to was open, it 
was not very uncommon for the sea, in storms, to throw its waters across 
the beach into it, making the waters of the lake brackish; but now the 
natural and artificial filling in of the southern end of the water-course 
and the lake prevents such an occurrence, so the lake has been care- 
fully cleaned out, and stocked with valuable fish. The waters of Lake 
Lily are solely from the rainfall ; they percolate slowly down and out 
from the bed of the lake, displacing the salt water which infiltrates the 
sand, yet not mixing much with it. Similar effects are produced 
among all the beaches. The different gravity of salt and fresh water has 
an influence upon the phenomena ; the fresh water being lightest, remains 
at the surface, and can be obtained by digging a few inches beneath the 
sand, anywhere between the beach ridges. Lake Lily is the only simi- 
lar body of water on the Cape below Cold Spring. 

§ The Recent formation of New Jersey, especially in the southern 
part of the State, is noted for extensive swamps and marshes. Those 
of the interior are heavily wooded, but none of Uiem are much above 
tide level; the more elevated and solid are "timber swamps," and not 
only furnish good and desirable lumber, but might in many cases be 
improved by clearing and culture, and thus make valuable farms. It 
seems remarkable more has not been done for the agricultural develop- 
ment of the interior of South Jersey, but the original .settlers looked 
to the sea for their highway, and to a great degree for their harvest too; 
for which reason they made their homes along the upland of the shore. 

Of late, through the enterprise of several parties, notably that of 
Charles K. Landis, of Vineland, the interior of the State has been 
better appreciated, and, being extensively and judiciously advertised, 
has attracted many intelligent and industrious settlers, who have suc- 
cessfully planted many fine vineyards, orchards, and farms. 

The cedar swamps, which are extensive on the banks of the rivers 
and around their sources, are overflowed, not stable land like the timber 
swamps ; the White Cedar (the Qtpressus thuyoides of the botanical 
nomenclature), which holds exclusive possession of them, flourishes 



112 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

only in submerged or saturated soils. In many places in South Jersey 
it grows in a peaty stratum, where there is neither clay, gravel, loam 
or mud, but only a compact mass of fibrous roots, and the debris of its 
own fallen growth. In such localities, as well as where more substan- 
tial components partly form a true soil, the white cedar grows densely, 
and in its young growth rapidly; afterwards it becomes crowded, and 
grows tall, but increases more slowly in diameter. 

The vegetable remains which fall from the swamp trees into the 
wet mass are shaded from the sun by the evergreen foliage, and thus 
kept cool and saved from rapid decomposition. Settling gradually 
down, they become submerged and then buried, from which time their 
decay is almost imperceptible. In this way the surface of the swamp 
is gradually elevated; a layer of more than a foot thick has thus been 
formed in sixty years. 

The original growth of cedars were sometimes seven feet or more in 
diameter, and immensely high ; the average size of the full-grown trees, 
however, was but about two feet and six inches. There are none of these 
great trees left, and as the whole area of Cedar Swamp is cut over 
every second generation, or every sixty years, a living cedar tree a 
hundred years old is now a rare specimen ; still, the natural term of 
the tree is a lifetime of successive centuries. Various parties have 
counted the annual rings in the logs and stumps of cedars, and various 
witnesses affirm the existence of from five himdred to over a thousand 
of them in a single specimen. Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., quoting a 
newspaper article of Dr. Beesley, of Dennisville, says (Second Visit to 
United States, vol. i. page 34) that " Dr. Beesley, of Dennis Creek 
counted 1080 rings of annual growth, between the centre and outside 
of a large stump six feet in diameter;" this grew atop of a previously 
fallen tree, which was half as old; thus fifteen centuries were registered 
in a couple of logs on the surface of a swamp, which has been sounded 
in places from eight to ten or even eleven or more feet deep, and xsfull 
of fallen logs to the very bottom. 

The white cedar, though a very tall, slim tree, sends no roots down 
into the firm soil underneath the swamp, but spreads them laterally in 
the shallow, soft, black, peaty, wet earth which is its congenial place 
of growth. The timber standing in a natural ancient cedar swamp is 
but a fraction of the quantity which has fallen and become subterranean. 
The living timber thus buried is apparently indestructible, and has 
been viitied from its place of deposit buoyant and sound, and used for 
the best quality of lumber, many hundreds and perhaps thousands of 
years after it had grown. This mining of timber has been carried on 
as a regular business in the swamps about Dennisville; between nine 
and ten thousand dollars' worth of shingles, at fifteen dollars a thousand, 
have been manufactured in a year from logs thus exhumed. The pro- 
duction of shingles did not consume all the timber taken, as a part of 



CEDAR MINES AT CAPE MAY. 



113 



it was large, fine logs, more valuable for boards, into which it was sawn. 
More than forty thousand dollars' worth of cedar rails and lumber are 
produced by these cedar swamps every year, and an acre of good 
swamp, fifty years in growth, is worth from five hundred to a thousand 
dollars. The cedars are mined not alone in the growing swamps, but 
in meadows where only stumps and dead roots break the surface, and 
in places where a smooth turf entirely hides all traces of wood from 
surface observation, as well in a part of the tide marshes, which were 
once cedar swamps, but where the growth of timber has been stopped 
by the encroachments of salt water in consequence of the subsidence 
of the swamps along the shore. Of course many of the buried trees 
are unfit for use. Those which grew when the swamp was shallow and 
the roots of the trees touched the gravel bottom, are so gnarly -as to be 
unfit for splitting. Some of the trees fell only from extreme age, 
deadness, and partial decay: these are worthless; some were prostrated 
and grew long after they fell : these are hard and boxy on one side, 
hence undesirable. The trees wanted by the miners are those not of 
the bottom layer, which were broken dozvn by the wind or otherwise, 
and buried at the perfection of their growth. 

The first tool of the miner is an iron sounding-rod; with this he 
probes the mud of the swamp, finding often that the logs lie so thickly 
across one another beneath the surface that it is only after repeated 
efforts that he can pass his rod among them. The miner judges of the 
value of the log he comes in contact with after examination with his 
probe, by signs known to an expert only; he feels out the size, shape, 
and position of it, and judges of the work required to secure it; he cuts 
down to the log through die peat with a sharp spade, and manages to 
get a chip from it ; by smelling of this chip he can tell whether he is 
dealing with a zvindfall or a breakdown, the latter being most likely to 
be sound lumber. Removing the peat, mud, roots, and rubbish-timber 
as far as necessary, the miner then saws off the log at the ends, his 
saw working without injury, the soil being free from grit. The log 
maybe thirty feet long, but is generally shorter. Having sawn the 
log off, the miner uses levers to loosen it from its place and to throw 
off superincumbent timber; this being done, the log floats upward 
with perfect buoyance ; the under side being most buoyant, the log, as 
it floats free, always turns over. The logs for shingles are sawn into 
bolts or blocks, and rived and shaved into shingles on the ground. 
The ground is gone over again and again with success by the miners, 
as the logs, once disturbed, continually work toward the surface. 

An inch of vegetable matter is deposited by the fall of foliage, twigs, 
etc., upon the surface of a cedar swamp in about five years, but as this 
fresh layer is itself buried it partly decays and diminishes in bulk pro- 
gressively very much by compression and other causes, so that no clue 
can be had from it as to the age of these remarkable swamps. Such a 



114 SCHEYICHDI AND THE STRAND. 

clue is found, however, in the buried cedars, which by annular rings 
tell, like a calendar, their own individual age, and by their relative 
positions demonstrate the successive generations of growth which 
must have taken place, before they could have appeared where they 
were left centuries since, superimposed and grown, one above another, 
in many layers. 

The attempt to estimate the age chronicled by interwoven logs is 
confusing, but the certainty of thousands of years is evident, and even 
ten or twelve generations of such trees as Dr. Beesley examined may 
have grown and died since the oldest swamp began; and yet the age 
thus recorded is occupied by the most modern layer of a formation 
which is, in all and at the oldest, but the very latest evolvement of the 
most extremely short and insignificant of all the geologic periods. 

If the record of ten thousand years can be preserved in mud and 
perishable wood, what is the chronology of the cycle in which obdu- 
rate gneiss and granite grows and disintegrates, crumbles and is 
recomposed of the old material, again and again, until the Azoic rocks 
develop into mineral wealth and fertile alluvium, tower into- forests, 
bloom into flowers, ripen into golden harvests, nourish the beasts and 
birds, redden the blood of the animal world, and give strength and 
vigor to the body of man; the fitting tabenacle of the immortal soul? 

§ Outside the Old beach, and immediately next the strand, are found 
irregular hillocks of shifting sand of various elevations, but all less 
than forty feet high. They are composed almost exclusively of fine 
white quartzose sand without clay or metallic admixture ; some few 
fragments or particles of shell can be found, but the mass of the beach 
is almost absolutely pure quartz. 

Red cedar trees, of which many are dead, are scattered among the 
hillocks, and are often found buried to the tops where the constantly 
shifting sands have drifted upon them. These hillocks, downs, or 
dunes, are denominated tlie Little or Young Beach; the ntethod by 
which they originate is obvious. 

Shoal shores at ebb of tide are exposed in wide strands, which 
rapidly dry under the influence of the sun and wind. Where a wide 
sandy strand is thus left bare, the wind sweeps the fine sand before it 
upon the beach and beyond the reach of the returning tide, and then 
deposits it in the forms described as characteristic of the Young Beach. 
The sea washes up additional sand, which takes the place of that taken 
off by the wind, and so the process continues which, though counter- 
acted by various agencies, has built up thousands of acres of Young 
Beach in the State. 

The continuity of the beaches on the sea front is broken by a series 
of inlets, through which the waters of the ocean flow into a number of 
bays or sounds which lie behind the beaches or within the marshes, 
and, communicating with one another by inside channels or thorough- 



PHENOMENA OF THE INLETS. 



IIS 



fares, make an available still-water navigation for a hundred miles north- 
ward from Cape Island to the head of Barnegat Bay. These bodies of 
water are from fiv^e to six miles across in several places, though not on 
an average more than one-third as wide, having, according to survey 
and careful estimate, an area of but one hundred and seventeen thou- 
sand two hundred and thirty-two acres, excluding the Raritan Bay and 
adjoining waters. 

The most of the inlets themselves are narrow, and, although the tides 
in the neighborhood of Sea Grove and along shore rise but from a 
little above four feet in the neap tides to six feet in the spring tides, 
yet the capacity of the sounds and their adjuncts is so great compara- 
tively that the sea ebbs and flows through the inlets with considerable 
force, especially when heavy seas run with the incoming tides. In 
consequence, the bays and sounds are constantly invaded by silt and 
sand, which, being caught by the abundant growth of grassy marsh 
roots along their margins, is retained and consolidated in quantities 
and to a degree which has much decreased the area and depth of those 
remarkable waters. 

The outgoing tide of the sounds cuts away the banks of the inlet 
and the adjoining shores, throwing the sand out upon the bars, from 
whence the shore currents and waves convey it along the strand; in 
this way shoals are added to the southwest of the beaches which crowd 
the inlets to the south, against the northeast and highest ends of the 
beaches ; presently a new inlet forces its way during a storm across the 
beach to the northwest of the old one, which may be closed up at the 
same time. The new inlet is then subjected to the same action as the 
other one, and with like results; in this way the inlet is continually 
shifted, wearing its way to the southward for a mile or more at an un- 
certain rate, and then forcing its way as may be back again to its ex- 
treme position toward the north. 

Northeast of Barnegat, the inlets move in an opposite manner to the 
one described as peculiar to those south of that place. The movement 
of the sands along the New Jersey ocean shore is immense, and due to 
causes operating on a vast scale in prolonged time. These causes are 
not fully understood, nor is the scope of their operation fully deter- 
mined. The theory of the subsidence itself — which, conceding a de- 
pression of one-fourth of an inch per annum, would submerge half or 
more of Cape May County in five hundred and twenty-eight years — has, 
notwithstanding the facts presumed to demonstrate it, been strenuously 
disputed by official geologists. 

However confident of a conclusion we may feel to be on the basis 
of facts in our possession, true courage of opinion is not obstinate, and 
a partial suspense of judgment leaves room for hospitality to the result 
of enlarged observation, maturer experience, and more deliberate com- 
parison and reflection. Galileo was certain the world moved, and it is 



Il6 SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND. 

equally certain the sands shift. They are carried away from one point 
or another it may be, but are deposited as well in another place ; shoals 
are created thus, and currents changed, changes of current bring change 
of drift, and so the transported sands may be shifted back again. Only 
long-continued observation can establish the fact of a persistent ten- 
dency, and still more care must be taken to verify the rate and extent 
of a movement, the evolution of which is completed only in centuries 
and ages of time. 

§ Beside the quartzose sand composing the beaches along the ocean 
front of New Jersey, there are an abundance of various kinds of peb- 
bles washed up from the sea. They are of small size, and every year 
a great quantity of them are conveyed to Philadelphia, and used in 
roofing buildinys and for other purposes. Quartz is exceedingly abun- 
dant in South Jersey ; the young beach is pure quartz sand, the old 
beach has but a very small percentage of clay, and the plains or bar- 
rens of Burlington and Ocean Counties have from ninety to ninety- 
eight per cent, of quartz in their soil. Pebbles of pure, transparent 
quartz abound in the gravel beds and at the shore of Sea Grove and 
Cape May; being washed clean and bright in the waves, they are often 
collected by bathing parties and other visitors, under the name of 
Cape May Diamonds. If the collectors have not gained great wealth 
in their gems, they have often found the treasure of health in their 
recreative amusements, and some of the pebbles, when well polished 
and set in gold, form handsome mementos of pleasant summer excur- 
sions and peaceful days beside the surf upon the sandy shore, as well 
as characteristic specimens of a remarkable geologic formation. 

Geologic research has, in caves, in mines, in tunnels, and other en- 
gineering excavations of submarine nature, been conducted under the 
sea with interesting and important results, but the present study may 
end properly and appropriately upon the strand of the open ocean, the 
type of the unfathomable and infinite. Divesting ourselves of fear, of 
conceit, of prejudice, of pride ; alone with the sand, the waves, the 
wind, and the breeze — the simplicity and grandeur of nature, our eyes 
become more clear, the reasoning soul sweeping with one flashing and 
intuitive glance the old levels and horizons, sees over sea and land a 
light not born of either, yet luminous as heaven, " which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world," revealing even in geologic ruins the 
love and glory of Our Father, and lighting the way to peace, righteous- 
ness, progress, and eternal happiness ! 



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